The Slayers of Dune Book III:The Prince of Arrakis
by MrPointy2
Summary: Liam Atreides awakens to his destiny.
1. Chapter 1

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**EVE: **(turns to face Buffy) Or you'll do what? I'll be sending a guest over to visit y'all later on tonight, after the sun goes down of course. Try and make him feel welcome before he rips y'all to pieces. Bye.

_Eve disappears in a flash of light (like a television being turned off)._

BTVS Season 7 episode 11 "Showtime"

Surayya walked with Buffy.

The two women walked down the white and gold trimmed hallways of the Imperial mansion. They were on their way to a party. They were on their way to a birthday party. They were on their way to a birthday party for Buffy's son. Surayya was a close friend of the family. They were both slayers.

The two women couldn't have been anymore different. Buffy was the shorter of the two. She was fair skinned with blonde hair and a pug nose that others often called cute. Her body was toned and naturally fit like all slayers. She looked like a woman in her mid twenties. Buffy was well over one hundred years old when she died to her first life. Surayya Atreides, the woman walking with her, was darker and a few inches taller than Buffy. Surayya had long well groomed raven black hair that went past her shoulders.

"I'm just saying, it's weird." Buffy said. She motioned her arms as she spoke. "The blood storm never happened, and since the blood storm never happened Liam never came back to help us. But I remember it happening! How is it that I remember something that never happened?" Surayya could tell she was frustrated. Nobody liked a temporal paradox.

"From the time I raised him from a baby he never slipped back in time to tell me he how much loved me. I remember that happening on the day the Destroyer resurrected me. It's too weird."

"It's weird alright." Surayya said and then smiled. "'bout as weird as a ten thousand year old corpse coming back from the dead and a god worm sleeping under the sands of Arrakis."

The two women turned a corner as they continued walking. In the back of her mind, Surayya was working on a logical analysis on what seemed to be a paradox. Twenty years ago, a slayer witch had taken DNA from both Buffy and Paul Maud' dib and combined them together a produce a male child with access to the memories of both Angel and Liam. That child had appeared to them several times in the past in response to a crisis. He had even helped to stop Arrakis from being overrun with billions of Turok-Han after a Senior Partner had opened a Hellmouth on Arrakis.

Surayya was trained as a mentant by Leto II. She would have it figured out soon. But there were other things that were bothering her. There were thing she needed to discuss with Buffy.

"Buffy, Your son is a _Kwisatz Haderach." _Surayya said. "With spice, he can access higher spatial dimensions. And since he is enchanted, he can access them not just mentally but physically as well." Buffy signaled that she understood what Surayya was saying so far.

"The _Kwisatz Haderach _was created by the Bene Gesserit as a way to spy on the great houses. The _Kwisatz Haderach _was originally designed to be a way for the Bene Gesserit to exert control over the human race. Buffy." Surayya said suddenly as she stopped and placed her hand on Buffy's shoulder. "The Bene Gesserit will come for him and there's nothing we can do about it."

Buffy looked up at her worried.

"The Bene Gesserit will test your son to see if he is a man or monster. They will use the method of crisis and observation. The box is called the gom jabbar. They will use electrical signals to induce pain directly into his nervous system. The Bene Gesserit will torture your son."

Buffy looked at her as if she was crazy. Buffy's white battle armor began to push out from under her skin.

"I'm sorry Buffy." Surayya said as they burst through the door leading to the party.

In the middle of the long room was a tall and thin young man. He had hair as black as the night sky and the strangest blue within blue eyes. The slayer witch that had conceived him had been feeding him a steady diet of spice ever since he was a baby. He was quite a wonder. On more than one occasion he had displayed the ability to peer into the future. The boy knew that his genetic father was the hero Paul Atreides from ancient myth. That meant that Leto II, the so called God Emperor of Dune, was his half brother and the woman that had trained him in hand to hand combat, the same woman he had a mild crush on, Surayya Atreides was his distant cousin and he, at a genetic level, was her ancient ancestor.

His name was Liam Atreides, the genetic offspring of Paul Maud 'dib and Buffy Summers. He had all the powers of the _Kwisatz Haderach _and the memories of both Liam and Angel. One of which was his mother's former lover.

Liam looked up and noticed the strange look on his mothers face. He didn't need to see the future to know why.

"Has _she_ been filling your head with tales of the Bene Gesserit?" Liam asked as he walked towards Buffy. Several of the young women at his table begged him not to go.

Liam stood a full six inches over Buffy. He had inherited his father's height.

"C'mon Mom, it's almost time for presents." Liam said to her. Buffy smiled as he escorted her to his birthday table.

Years ago, the slayers had moved from the dusty cave dwelling of sietch Kindle to the modern imperial palace. The Fish Speakers insisted on it for safety. Since the age of five, Liam had been raised in the royal palace. The last Atreides that lived here was Leto II.

Buffy and Surayya took their seats on both sides of Liam as guests began to bring forth their presents. The first gift was from the slayer witch that had borne him. It was a black polished teakwood stake Liam had used long ago in sietch Kindle to kill a vampire. It was the first time he had met his mother. It was months before he was born. He read the attached note.

"I told you I would get this back to you. Happy birthday son." It was from Motorria, the witch slayer that had borne him. Liam smiled as he looked up.

The Tleilaxu were wheeling in a cylinder the size of a man. The cylinder of over two meters tall. It had various tubes and wires protruding out of and feeding into it. Liam could tell something alive was inside.

"Is this the golem?" Liam asked. He knew what the Tleilaxu had brought him. It made his skin crawl. They insisted that this was a gift fitting for an Atreides. They had brought the same gift to Leto II for thousands of years.

It was a clone of the sword master Duncan Idaho. It was a clone of the same sword master that had taught his father Paul Atreides.

Liam nodded to the Tleilaxu as they wheeled the golem into a corner of the room. Liam went back to the party snacks and his thoughts of which of the women at his table would pleasure him tonight. In the hundreds of thousands of years of their existence not even the slayers have been able to defeat the beast with two backs.

Liam took a small bite of a spice wafer and felt the future come upon him. Liam was part Human and part slayer. His visions of the future could be tweaked by the Destroyer. He was the first and only male in the history of the world ever to receive visions from the Destroyer. He was the first and only male ever to receive slayer prophecies.

He saw a woman enter the room. She looked determined, focused and very angry. The woman was tall with fair skin and long grey hair that had an odd sheen to it. The woman held a long Japanese katana sword. Around her, a pack of blind men swarmed. Liam saw them rushing into the room killing everyone.

The woman in his vision looked directly at him and said "I am going to kill you Liam Atreides. You and your slayer whores!" Her hated felt like a blast furnace.

A moment later, every slayer in the room snapped to attention. They had just gotten the same vision.

The slayers spread out around the room in less than a moment knocking over chairs and gifts in the process. Surayya and Buffy put themselves between Liam and the door holding their scythe at the ready.

They came with the roar of a rushing wave.

Dozens of robed men, with their eyes cut out, exploded into the room. Around him, Liam could hear the clanging of metal on metal as their short jeweled daggers hit against the slayer's scythes. Liam could hear the screams of the dying as some of the slayers were murdered. He could smell the sweat and blood and the sheer desperation of the robed men as they began to fall.

In the mist of them, _she_ appeared. She was tall, regal and utterly deadly. There was a silver flash and the heads of two slayers came off. Bright red blood splashed against the wall.

She moved faster than the eye could follow. Her sword was against his throat. He could feel the steel cutting into his skin.

"When you awake in hell, tell them Lilith, the mother of all demons, sent you!" She hissed.

Something tremendous slammed down on her jaw. Lilith was knocked to the ground.

"Get your damn hands off my grandson!" Sineya, the first slayer, growled at her. In the moment it took her vision to clear Sineya was gone.

"I will gut you boy!" Lilith spat at Liam as she disappeared in a flash of light.

For a moment everything was still. Then Buffy noticed something as she walked over to one of the dying men.

"Hey, I know these guys." Buffy said as she leaned over one of the robed bodies. Buffy held the curved and jeweled knife in her hands. She recognized it instantly.

"These guys are called the bringers. They work for the source of all evil. They work for the reason there is evil." Buffy tossed the knife to her son who caught it in mid-air. Liam intensely studied the jewels in the handle of the gold trimmed knife. His neck was still bleeding.

Happy birthday son." She said with grimness in her voice. "Looks like we're at war with the First."

On the other side of the room Surayya noticed a slayer who stood silently with her face to the wall. Surayya had seen this plenty of times before. Newbie slayers were often shell shocked after their first battle. Surayya walked over to the girl to comfort her. The slayer looked familiar somehow. Surayya placed her hand on the girls shoulder. She turned, slowly. The side of her face was gone. The girl had one eye torn out and ribbons of flesh hung from her chest where something had slashed her open. She spoke. Her voice was like thick molasses bubbling from her torn throat.

"Why did you leave me to die, Surayya? You left me to die on Tlailos Three." It was Alisha Itkin, one of the slayers killed in their assault on the Old Ones.

Surayya jumped backwards. She wasn't even aware that she was screaming.

"Surayya Atreides, I know where you live and I am going to kill you." The image of the slayer disappeared.

It took hours for Surayya to stop shaking.


	2. Chapter 2

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**Jenny/The First:** Hmm. You think you can fight me? I'm not a demon, little girl. I am something that you can't even conceive of. The First Evil. Beyond sin, beyond death. I am the thing the darkness fears.

You'll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate.

**Buffy:** (loses her patience) Alright, I get it. You're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?

She was a crispy critter. She was chained to a wall in a world of fire. The young woman writhed as the pain came over her again. Every day her flesh would grow back and every night the fire would burn it off. She was chained to a wall, in pain, in hell.

Ashoka Lang looked and saw her hope of rescue from this terrible place. Years ago, a team of Slayers attacked a demon nest at the edge of the galaxy. Everyone died. Everyone. Then she woke up here. One of demons had resurrected her and dragged her down to hell. They had tortured her for what seemed like thousands of years. Ashoka was insane with grief and pain.

She saw the ship as it passed over head. It was long and black with an unnatural sheen that spoke of eldritch technology. She recognized it instantly. It was the "Memories of Dawn".

The Slayers had come back for her at last!

Minutes later, there was a green flair from the far corner of hell. After a moment, the "Memories of Dawn" leapt back into normal space.

They had left her behind!

Ashoka was too broken to cry. She howled and cursed the slayers. The fire came again and burned her skin.

"Would you destroy them all?" The voice asked.

Ashoka did not hear it the first time. The voice spoke to her softly over and over again for what seemed like years.

"Will you destroy the slayers?" It asked, It's voice even and soft.

"Yes, yes." She said finally understanding.

The chains popped off her wrist as a portal opened before her. Something like a dark cloud stabbed into her. Ashoka fell to her knees as she felt the power of the First course through her, She felt strong and focused. She got to her feet with a renewed purpose.

"Go Ashoka Lang. Go to Arrakis, find the slayers and kill them all."

As she stepped into the portal, the voice in her mind said: "But, leave the boy for me."

Ashoka stepped into the portal as it closed behind her. The First laughed.

There were thousands of ships on the night side of IX.

Decades ago the slayers had contracted with the Machine culture of the planet simply known as IX to act as their shipyard. The slayers brought their ships here for upgrades and repairs.

In a conference room near the ship yards a small group of women met. They were a top level mix of Bene Gesserit, Fish Speakers and Slayers.

The years had made them fast friends. In the decades following the Arrakis peace treaty, they had begun working together, on small missions at first, then larger strikes. The slayers were no longer the little sisters of the galaxy. They were now major players in Human events.

Supreme Reverend Mother Paloma still held her grip of the Bene Gesserit. She had convinced the sisterhood that it was vital to play along with the Slayers to earn their confidence. They had a _Kwisatz Haderach_ at their command which made the slayers more powerful than they knew.

"A _Kwisatz Haderach_ in the hands of children! Unacceptable!" Paloma often thought. "We struggled for thousands of years to breed such a creature only to have him stolen from us by the Atreides. To have a second one appear out of nowhere is a sign that we must retake control of fate." Paloma war gamed every combination of tool available to the Bene Gesserit. She considered everything from outright kidnapping to sexual seduction.

"The boy is surrounded by women. The boy was raised by women. What we need is something new, something exotic to catch his attention." She thought. Even now Paloma had a cadre of women training in secret for the chance to seduce Liam.

"First we will see if he survives my gom jabbar." Paloma thought as she turned her thoughts back to the meeting.

Fleet commander Guerrero was starting her speech.

"For decades, we have fought scattered battles here and there." She said. "But, now I believe the time is right for something larger."

Heads in the room nodded.

Guerrero pressed a button. A high definition image of the galaxy appeared. The classic pinwheel shape showed brightly on the screen. The galaxy appeared as a multicolored swirl of light. The poetry of it was magnificent. Within it, billions of planets and trillions of humans lived and died in a river of stars.

In the middle of the galaxy was a black spot. There, there was no light, no stars, no life. At the center of the galaxy was a place where the laws of physics broke down and _something_ alien lived.

"We believe this to be the source of all evil in the galaxy." Guerrero said. "We believe that _major_ forces use the singularity at the center of the galaxy to access this dimension."

Guerrero paused a moment before she made her next announcement.

"We believe that we have the technology to destroy that singularity and cut off the flow of evil into our world."

Guerrero pressed a second button. An animation appeared on the screen. It showed a series of stars orbiting, then falling into the black hole. As every star fell the black hole grew smaller, it's event horizon grew sharper. Finally, the black hole became so small and compact that it's event horizon began to cut the bonds between virtual particle pairs. The black hole grew hot. In the animation, it exploded with enough force to turn the screen white.

"If all goes as projected, we should be able to destroy the singularity with minimum damage."

"What's the worst that could happen?" One of the women asked.

"We punch a hole in space and the universe is destroyed." Guerrero said flatly. "But we've assigned a very low probability of that happening."


	3. Chapter 3

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**Power bases are very dangerous because they attract people who are truly insane, people who seek power only for the sake of power.**

Leto II

It was graduation day on Arrakis.

All along the royal court yard, hundreds of slayers lined up for the final rituals of their graduation ceremony. Today, they would be graduating from the newly restored Slayer Academy. Decades ago Surayya, Motorria and thousands of other slayers had stood on the same grounds. This was the place where they heard their graduation speech from Leto II, then launched their attack on Tailos Three.

Buffy, Surayya and Motorria sat together in the review stands. Buffy was awed and amazed at the sheer pageantry of the graduation ceremony. There were such grand fireworks, and music and speeches. Surayya was growing sick of it all. Young women had been calling her "Ma'am" all day long. Kids too young to wear a sport bra were asking her to tell war stories about "the good old days."

"If one more of these snot nosed kids points at me with their eyes wide with wonder and star struck at meeting the "legend" someone will get hurt." Surayya said. She remembered how cocky she was when she graduated from the slayer academy decades ago. But then again, she had the right to be. Her class was the first.

Surayya suddenly turned to Buffy and asked her about the First.

"The First is not a demon, or an Old one." She said. "The First is something new. But make no mistake. The First is pure evil. It is the reason that evil exists."

Buffy paused a moment before she continued.

"We cannot touch The First. The First works by exerting influence. Evil influence."

"Vampires kill for food. Demons kill for fun. What motivates the First?" Surayya asked.

"Spike once told me, it's all about power. The First wants to rule all of creation. Or more accurately, The First wants to usurp the order of creation. It doesn't need to be evil. It's just that evil is the only option left to it." Something obvious entered Buffy's mind. "That tells me that the First may be one of the Powers-That-Be that has fallen from grace." Buffy stopped to take a look at the crowd.

"All that is just theory on my part." She said.

"So, how do we kill it?" The Surayya asked.

"Kill it? Kill the first?" Buffy thought. "What an odd question."

"You don't kill the First." She said. "You just make it go away. The First cannot die."

"Why?" Surayya was genuinely curious. She was a slayer. The idea of a thing that couldn't be killed was strange.

"The First is incorporeal. We can't touch it." Buffy said.

"But if we could touch it?" Surayya insisted.

"I guess if we could touch it, we can kill it." Buffy answered.

A moment of silence passed between them. Buffy and Surayya occupied box seats above the field where the graduating slayers stood. They had a nice view of the entire field.

Fleet commander Guerrero took the stage below. She was in her dress white uniform which consisted of a white jacket and pants with gold trim. She even had medals. Surayya watched her through binoculars. Surayya snorted in disgust.

"A slayer with medals?" She said to herself. "I raised a god and closed a Hellmouth. Where's my medal?"

Buffy looked at her. "We live to serve." Buffy chided. Surayya rolled her eyes.

After a moment she said. "Tell me about Lilith. Is she the same one from the ancient writings?"

"No idea." Buffy said. "Never met her. From what I know Lilith was the first mother of creation. She was meant to give birth to the human race. She rebelled against the order of heaven and became the mother of all demons in this dimension." Buffy paused as she thought for a moment. "I can see why she's pissed. It's our job to kill her children."

"Who do you think seduced her?" Surayya asked already knowing the answer.

"My money is on the First." Buffy said. "The First was probably the one that also convinced Eve to partake of the knowledge of Good and Evil."

"So the First is old?" Surayya asked.

"Older than the world." Buffy answered.

Surayya digested what Buffy had told her.

"So Spike knew the First?" She asked.

"Yes. He said the First spoke to him often. It even appeared as all the villains I had killed once. For a while Spike was insane in the basement. I took him in. I healed him. The bastard then tried to rape me."

Surayya had heard none of this. Buffy's perspective came as a shock to her.

"The Spike I knew was different." Surayya said. "Of course he was a ball of light when I met him. He saved the galaxy from burning to a crisp. His Human soul was chained to a demon sprit for ten thousand years. I can't imagine how much pain he was in. After his death, he was in a better place."

"How did he die?" Buffy asked. It saddened her to think of Spike as being gone forever.

"I killed him." Surayya said as she brought the binoculars back up to face.

There was dead silence in the room.

It took a moment for Surayya to notice that Buffy was staring at her wide eyed with her mouth open.

"YOU KILLED SPIKE!" She screamed.

"I forget she didn't know." Surayya thought. "I know you loved him Buffy. He loved you too. But this Spike had been on Arrakis for thousands of years. He was not the man you knew. He was the one who sent me to retrieve the Dragon Scepter the time we met in the magic shop, remember?"

Buffy took on a faraway look as long buried memories came back to her. Her face crumbled. It looked as if she was going to cry.

Surayya put an arm around her for comfort. They sat in silence for long moments. After a while, they turned their attention to the speech Guerrero was making. Her voice echoed over the intercom.

"…conditions. Effective today, I am accepting the position of Fleet admiral in the Unified Command of the Human Defense Alliance. Fish Speakers, Slayers and Bene Gesserit have joined forces in the provision of a common defense. This is a bold new age. Humanity and it's soldiers work and fight today not only for themselves and their time but for coming, yes, distant generations. A historical task of unique dimensions has been entrusted to us by the Creator that we are now obliged to carry out. The galaxy must be purged of undesirables. Humanity must make itself pure of alien influence. The soil of many worlds have been fed with the blood of slayers sacrificed for our grand cause. We have paid a price too high, we have suffered more than the righteous would require. Enemies surround us. Destiny calls us We must strike into the heart of the darkness that poisons the world.

Our opponents should not deceive themselves. In the thousands of years of recorded history, our people have never been more determined and united than today. The Lord of the universe has been so generous to us in recent years that we bow in gratitude before a Providence that has permitted us to be members of such a great nation. We thank Him that along with those in earlier and coming generations of the Humanity, our deeds of honor may also be recorded in the eternal book of Human history!"

The crowd went wild. Thunderous applause filled the huge arena. Thousands of Slayers raised their Lexan knifes as they howled.

Buffy turned to Surayya. "Is it my imagination or did Guerrero just quote Hitler?" Surayya looked worried. "It looks like the Slayers are wearing the big girl pants now."


	4. Chapter 4

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Mood? What has mood to do with it? **You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood!** Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.

Counsel of Gurney Halleck to young Paul Atreides when he declares he is not in the mood for training.

Liam fought with a dead man.

The golem given to him by the Tleilaxu clone masters was fully revived and active. It was the genetic reincarnation of the legendary swordsman Duncan Idaho who trained the Emperor Paul Atreides his genetic father.

The golem parried, deflecting his attack then pressed forward. Liam stumbled backwards nearly falling. He was in no way ready for this type of fighting. He had trained with Surayya and the slayers all his life. He was excellent at hand to hand combat. Surayya was still in charge of his training. She demanded he learn sword fighting.

After the attack by Lilith two days ago, he could see the wisdom of it.

Liam held his sword upwards, paused for a moment, and then viciously slashed downwards at the golem. Idaho easily pivoted to avoid the blade. While Liam was caught up in the forward momentum of his reckless swing, Idaho turned and smacked the broadside of his sword against Liam's buttock.

The slayers in the room laughed.

"The young master has much to learn in the art of patience." Duncan said. He turned to Liam and said in a more serious tone. "Over committing yourself in battle will get you killed and your cause lost." Duncan stared at him with an unblinking steel gaze. Liam humbly bowed his head in acknowledgement.

One of the slayers threw Liam a towel. Her name was Colette Sereas. She was a childhood friend of Liam since age six. She was all of twenty years old. She had a round face, short hair and firm trim body. They used to hunt sand vipers together outside of sietch Kindle. Liam had lost his virginity to her. Now she served as a member of his protection team. Four slayers were on permanent assignment to protect the chosen one. That was his mothers' idea.

"Still as graceful as ever I see?" She said. Colette was teasing him. She was a slayer. She had all the strength and speed her calling gave her. Liam on the other hand was just a boy still trying to find his place in the world. He could keep up with the slayers, if Surayya pushed him. But if left to his own devices, he would prefer to spend his days basking in the warm Arrakis sun and writing poetry.

The conference room they had converted into a training area was deep within the royal palace. Still, that didn't stop Lilith and the bringers from attacking them. It didn't stop slayers from dying.

"He just caught me off guard. That's all." Liam said in his defense.

"Sure." Colette said as she gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

The girl entered the room unnoticed.

No one paid any attention to her because she was a slayer. She moved like them. They should have paid attention to her because she was a _dead_ slayer. Ashoka Lang walked through the crown of slayers with a single minded determination.

She was here for vengeance.

Her sisters, the women she loved, the women she had a bond with that superseded everything else in the world, had abandoned her in hell. The First had freed her and given her some of its terrible power. She would use that power to extract her revenge. Ashoka stood in the mist of them like a wolf among lambs. The women around stood chatting mindlessly at the trivial things the _wunderkind_ had performed. Ashoka saw nothing special in him. He was just a tall, lanky male.

She stepped up behind the first slayer and slit her throat. Blood ran over her hand. Ashoka grabbed the scythe from the back pouch of the dying slayer. She brought the axe down on the two slayers chatting near the wall nearly cleaving them in half. Their bloody bodies slumped to the floor.

The First had made her strong.

Colette looked up in time to see Ashoka launching herself towards her. Liam saw it too. He didn't bother to think or remember what Duncan had just taught him. Liam moved with an unnatural speed. In the blink of an eye he had placed his body between Ashoka and Colette.

The scythe punched through him destroying his internal organs. His blood gushed out. The last thing Liam saw as the darkness overtook him was the pure hatred burring in the eyes of Ashoka Lang.

He was floating between life and death.

Liam was well trained by the Bene Gesserit. They taught him their deepest secrets. His witch mother constantly fed a diet of spice to help in the training. Liam was dying. Blood poured out of his body depriving his brain of oxygen. Brain cells began to die. Parts of him were put to sleep. Parts of him awakened.

Liam reached out and slowed his down metabolism. He reduced his need for oxygen but as such he could not keep a firm lock on certain memories he had locked away inside of him. Memories he swore he would never allow to see the light of day.

"Whoa, this is quite a mess." The memories spoke to him. "I haven't seen this much blood since the last time I fed."

Liam pushed the memories away with what little strength he had. The darkness was getting deeper. He was slipping away.

"Look kid, I know a way out. I remember everything the Bene Gesserit taught us. I have a photographic memory and I have been listening, _to everything_, for a very long time." The memories said.

"No." Liam responded. "I rather die. You are a monster."

"Kiddo, were all monsters. Sorry, I'm not going to let you drag me down just because you want to be a do-gooder. I'm not going through that again."

From the deepest recesses of Liam's mind something dark and powerful burst forth. As Liam spiraled downward into death, the clear and perfect memories of Angelus bubbled forward armed with all the powers the Bene Gesserit had given him

It was Motorria that came to Buffy late that afternoon. The Slayers had called her to see if she could work any of her healing magic.

Motorria approached Buffy who sat with other slayers in the main conference room. They look so small gathered together in the corner of the huge room.

"I'm sorry Buffy." Motorria said mournfully. "But, Liam is dead." She said.


	5. Chapter 5

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

And that's where we're going…Right back to the beginning...Not the Bang, not the Word. The true beginning. …It's not about right. Not about wrong.. It's about _**power**_.

The First

BTVS S07E01 "Lessons"

His spirit floated between worlds.

The spirit of Liam Arteries drifted between the universes. He was the _Kwisatz Haderach_, the bridge between worlds. Now he only carried himself. The image of Arrakis floated upwards towards him out of the darkness. He felt himself floating down into an endless ocean of dunes. Liam could feel the hot wind across his skin and the Arrakis sun burning down upon his flesh. He wiped sand from his eyes as he gazed upon a group of men sitting in a circle.

Liam came down among them. He looked up at the other men. They were all him. They all wore his face.

"We are all of us, together." One of the men said. His wore Liam's face with a faint scar across his nose. "There are an infinite number of universes and we are there in all of them. This is the place where we meet and conspire to work together. This is our place of power."

Another man looked at him. He wore Liam's face. One eye was missing.

"You carry the wound of Ashoka." He said. "She has made her mark in many universes, including my own."

Another one of him spoke. "We have business here that transcends the trivialities of our own worlds." He said. His voice was the same but deeper than Liam's.

"We must attend to the business of the Gods. We must learn how to use the weapon if we are to meet our destiny." Liam said to his multiple selves.

"The weapon, what is the weapon?" Liam asked.

"We are." Liam answered to his newest self. "The _Kwisatz Haderach_ was originally built by the Powers that be for the sacred purpose of destroying the source of all evil. We were originally built to kill the First."

"Oh." The newest Liam said. He had forgotten all about the fact that he was dead.

Buffy sat in mourning.

It had taken nearly twenty slayers to secure Ashoka Lang in one of the holding cells. No one knew who she was or why she attacked them. She growled like an animal as she fought wave after wave of slayers. It took Buffy in full battle armor to bring her down. The last time she saw someone that strong was a preacher named Caleb, the same preacher that had blinded Xander.

Buffy ran her finger tips over Liam's cold face. The blood from his wound had coagulated. Fish Speakers would be coming to prepare the body soon.

"This wasn't suppose to happen." Buffy thought. She had faced death many times before but always on the battlefield with her eyes wide open. Children were not supposed to die before their parents.

"We just had his twenty-first birthday." Buffy chided herself. "He wasn't a kid."

Tears swelled in her eyes. She frowned as grief drowned her and then she broke. Buffy held her face next to Liam.

"Oh, baby. What have they done to you?" She said.

Angelus was working furiously.

Liam's Bene Gesserit training, his Bene Gesserit training, had permitted him to remember the deep secrets of the undead. When a certain type of sprit enters a dead body you got a vampire. The basic problem every vampire faced was how to turn on the lights, how to get the corpse animated. Liam's corpse presented the same problem with one tiny hitch. Angelus wasn't a vampire but the memory of a vampire. His only hope was the fact that Liam was the product of magic. The demon Angelus was well versed in magic. He had even tried to destroy the world once by awaking Acathla. The memory of Angelus could feel itself fading away as the neurons in Liam's brain continued to decay.

The memory of Angelus doubled its efforts to awaken the dead.

"So we are the weapon of fate?" Liam asked his multiple selves as they sat under a burning sky.

"Before the worlds were framed, there was a war in heaven. There was a schism between the Powers that Be." An older version of Liam said. "Before the bang, before the Word, the enemy of creation was captured and cast into a burning pit made of warped space. "

"The First?" The newest Liam asked.

"Yes, the First. From his jail cell he casts shadow puppets into our three dimensional space. Only one who can bridge higher special dimensions can reach him and destroy him."

"Why don't the Powers that Be kill him?" Liam asked himself.

"Politics. The First is a divine being and as such he cannot be harmed by the divine."

"So they want us to do it?"

"Yes. The Powers that Be began guiding Human evolution millions of years ago. They had a breakthrough with Drusilla. Your namesake killed her before she could spread her genes. Her prophecy visions proved she had access to higher spatial dimensions."

The newer Liam recalled the terrible memories of killing a young innocent girl.

"They had a second chance once Spike came to Arrakis. He gave spice it's special abilities. He began to influence the Bene Gesserit."

"What!"

"Ask them." One of the other Liam's said. "Ask the Bene Gesserit how they got the idea of the _Kwisatz Haderach. Ask them where they got the idea from."_

Liam looked at his multiple selves.

"In case you didn't notice. I'm dead." Liam said.

"We are the _Kwisatz Haderach. _We embrace all the possibilities in all the universes. Nothing escapes us. We know what will happen next." He answered himself.

Behind the newest Liam a blue white portal opened. Liam was pulled through it in a blink of an eye. A moment later a second a much younger Liam stood. He was taking directions from an older version of himself.

"It is time for you to go to _his_ universe at a point in time when Buffy and Surayya will capture Dracula."

The second Liam disappeared. The men sat silently in the desert as sand blew over them.

Buffy exhaled.

It was over as far as she was concerned. The driving force that made her bring herself to the future was gone. There was nothing here for her now. She remembered when she found her mother's body laying still on the living room floor. She recalled the shock and horror of seeing someone she loved dead and gone. Buffy could feel the weight of thousands of years come down on her. She trembled has she began to pull the silk burial shroud over Liam's face.

The body exhaled.

Buffy jumped back. She stood shocked. She was wide eyed and open mouthed.

"What the…!" She said. "You're dead!"

"It's ok mom." Liam said as he sat up. "I feel much better now."


	6. Chapter 6

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.

from _Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib_ by the Princess Irulan

Liam sat up then leapt from the table. Buffy stood before him dumfounded. Only moments ago Liam was dead. Not dying, but dead. His skin was pale. His blood was beginning to coagulate. He had no breath. Liam was dead.

Now he was alive again and staring at her. His eyes had a distant faraway look as if reviewing thousands of possibilities. Liam snapped out of it. His blue with blue eyes focused on Buffy.

"We are going to kill the First." He said to her. "Now everything makes sense. I remember being freed from Hell and returning to Sunnydale. I remember the First trying to get me to kill myself out of guilt at what Angelus had done. I remember giving Spike the amulet that started all of this."

Liam approached Buffy.

"I remembered how much he loved you. How much he still loved you after he left Sunnydale." He said.

Buffy looked down sheepish. Her son was revealing her most intimate memories.

Liam ran the tips of his fingers over the scar over his belly.

"I have adestiny_. _" He said. "I have the full memories of Liam and I am a mortal. So the vampire with a soul has been reborn as a human. And I am _Kwisatz Haderach, _I embrace all worlds. I am omnipresent, I am divine."

Liam rushed past Buffy. He grabbed her on the way out. Liam parted the curtains to the main area of the wake. He cleared his throat. Motorria and Surayya looked up, looked down, then looked back up again. It would have been funny if everyone wasn't so grim.

"What is it with the house of Summers?" Surayya asked. "Don't any of you people stay dead?" Motorria said nothing. She just walked over to Liam and hugged him for a long, long time.

The "Memories of Dawn" swung into daylight.

Forty-two thousand kilometers above the colony planet of Trellian, the flagship of the slayer fleet kept its geostationary orbit. Trellian had only been colonized a few years ago. There were over twenty million humans living there. Fleet commander Guerrero had received reports that the colony was already overrun with vampires. Normally, she would dispatch an assault team to deal with the problem. But the newly created Human Defense Alliance (HDA) demanded a marked show of force. They wanted to let the public know that the HDA was fully operational. They wanted a vulgar display of power. So she launched the "Memories of Dawn" and an armored battalion.

Hours ago, the slayers had landed outside of the capital city. Strike teams of four slayers each had infiltrated the city under cover of night. The hand to hand fighting was brutal. The vampires here knew that they were coming and had prepared themselves.

The vampires fought back with lasguns and nerve gas. The assault teams suffered a sixty-seven percent mortality rate. Just before dawn, the vampires had launched a small tactical nuke.

Guerrero watched the smoke from the scorched area from orbit. The population was in panic. There were quite a few civilian deaths.

Reverend Mother Nisha Braun stood next to Guerrero just out of reach. She did want the slayer to touch her.

"Things are going badly?" She said.

Guerrero was slow to respond. Nisha was the most pessimistic Bene Gesserit she had ever known. Still, she was a ranking member of the Human Defense Alliance.

"This happens in war." Guerrero responded. "We should have sent in a reconnaissance team in first. These demons are well prepared."

Nisha frowned. Her voice was sarcastic. "Well, if the slayers can't handle a few vampires, perhaps the Fish Speakers can."

Guerrero looked back at her in unbelief. The slayers were the final and absolute authority on matters of the supernatural in the galaxy. It was all spelled out in the treaty of Arrakis signed over twenty years ago.

"_We_ will handle this!" Guerrero hissed.

Cracked voiced came over the intercom.

"Receiving heavy fire…Some sort of thing moving in the hills…dammit Keisha check your six!, check your six!,…" The intercom filled with the sounds of screams and weapons fire.

"Commander, we have inbound." said a voice from the command center. "Twelve, no twenty fighters have launched from the planet."

From the planet below, a swarm of small one man fighters approached the "Memories of Dawn."

"If this is too much for you to handle…" Nisha hissed onto Guerrero's ear. Guerrero would not stand for it. She would not let her pride be insulted.

Guerrero pressed the fire button. From the nose of the "Memories of Dawn" a beam of antiprotons hotter than the sun poured down on the planet.

Millions died.

Liam spoke to the woman before him.

"This is the war that will end all wars" He said. "What came before was just prolog. We are a part of a cycle of history that will see the extermination of the source of evil. We will be the ones to destroy the First." Liam proclaimed. "It all starts with the secret the Bene Gesserit have been hiding for thousands of years."

The Bene Gesserit caught him as he was leaving the medical center. Mother Superior Paloma was among them. She held an ancient box in her hand. Liam knew what it was. He broke away from the slayers and boldly walked up to the Mother Superior. Liam placed his hand in the box. He showed no fear.

"Come, Reverend Mother." He said. "Test me with your Gom Jabbar. Find out if I am man or beast."

The memory of Angelus inside of him dreaded the test to come.


	7. Chapter 7

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin.** The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. **You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.**

Muad'Dib on Law The Stilgar Commentary

He was surrounded by women.

Liam sat at a table surrounded by slayers and Bene Gesserit. The Mother Superior adjusted the wires on the Gom Jabbar while Buffy, Surayya and Motorria stood over him watching everything that Paloma did. They didn't trust the Bene Gesserit. They just got Liam back. They were not going to lose him again.

Reverend Mother Paloma suggested they move to one of the medical centers in the Imperial palace. The _Gom Jabbar_ wounded as much as it educated.

"This is a test of crisis and observation." Paloma said. "A mind that is Human can deny the demands of the flesh. The animal does not have that option."

"What about the demon?" Angelus asked deep within Liam's mind. "I am beyond the flesh. Breath and blood and skin mean nothing to me. That reminds me of a girl I killed back in the 1800's…"

"Shut up!" Liam screamed to himself. He focused his mind on keeping the killer within him silent. The Bene Gesserit only saw it as a slight tightening of his jaw muscles. They assumed he was just nervous about the test.

Paloma looked Liam straight in the eye before she spoke. Her eyes were dark and focused. With her sharp nose she looked like a hawk to Liam.

"Ready yourself." She said. Paloma flipped the switch on the Gom Jabbar. Electric current flowed into raw nerve endings. Agony poured into him.

Pain slammed into him like a block of concrete. His mind reeled. By reflex, Liam used the Bene Gesserit training his mother had given him. He defocused his mind and gave the pain nowhere to go. That was not enough. The Gom Jabbar poured pain directly into his nervous system. No amount of training could stop the physics of his body. It felt as if the skin on his hand had been peeled back and someone was slicing raw muscle with a razor made of fire.

That's when Angelus stepped in.

The memories of Angelus inserted themselves between Liam's mind and his body. They became a buffer that made the pain just bearable. In the blink of an eye, the memories of Angelus became Liam's own.

_They stood above the cup of sorrows. Spike had been fighting him tooth and nail for the privilege of cementing his role in the Shanshu prophecy. Angel knew better. The Shanshu prophecy was no comfort, no redemption for all he had done. The screams of everyone he had ever murdered constantly rang in his ears. He was haunted day and night by ghosts that demanded his blood. This was his burden for having a soul. Something slammed into his head knocking him backwards on to his back. Spike stood over him, holding a heavy wooden cross. His hands were burning…_

_He rolled off of Buffy. The smell of sex was still on him. The slayer was quite the animal. Her appetite matched his own. He had done things with her that would have made Liam blush. She was quite specific and persistent in her demands. He enjoyed his time with the soft warm flesh of the slayer. He would have her again before he killed her. Angelus dressed and headed for the door. He stood outside in the alley gathering his thoughts. His return to the world was quite unexpected. If he knew it would be this easy to return to the killing field, he would have banged the slayer a long time ago. A woman, with a cigarette in her hand, walked up to him, asked him if he was ok. What was she doing in a dark alley this time of night anyway? Angelus turned and ripped her throat open before she could move. He blew her smoke out of his dead lungs. "I'm doing just fine." Angelus said to the cold night air. _

_Janna of the Kalderash gypsy clan called herself Jenny Calendar. She was there to spy on the slayer and the vampire with a soul. But tonight, that would not be enough. The filthy gypsy had conspired to re-ensoul Angel using the orb of Thesulah. Angelus was not going back. He would not suffer the indignity of having a conscious. He spent hundreds of years listing to Angel whine about everything. Screw that! Angelus didn't break a sweat as he broke Jenny's neck. He watched without passion as her body slump to the ground._

"Liam!" Buffy was frantic. She screamed his name again as she shook his shoulder. His mind returned to the world. Liam's eyes snapped into focus. The women were watching him silently.

"Well? Did I pass?" He asked the Bene Gesserit who sat before him.

"Why don't we just kill them all then go play in the sunlight?" The memory of Angelus asked Liam silently. Liam sneaked a peak at Buffy. "Damn, I'd like to hit that again. " Angelus muttered. "There's this spot on the back of her knee that makes her melt like butter."

Liam clamped down on his mind. He used every ounce of his training to silence the obscene mutterings in his mind.

"I'm fine mother." Liam said. He smiled at Buffy showing teeth. Liam turned back to the Bene Gesserit. They nodded in agreement. As far as they were concerned, Liam was fully human.

Deep in his mind, Liam could hear a nameless dead voice asking "Who do I have to kill to get a drink around here?"

Fleet commander Guerrero sat alone in the dark.

Hours ago she had ordered the murder of millions of people. Her troops were under attack and overwhelmed. She did what she had to do to preserve the upper hand. Guerrero had poured a stream of white hot anti-matter down on a civilian population. The spot where it touched the planet still glowed with horrific energy. She could see it from orbit as a naked eye object.

"I did my job." She muttered to herself. She refused to take responsibility. She refused to acknowledge that she had even committed a crime.

"I did my job. I protected the common good. This is what happens in war." She worked hard to believe her glittering justifications.

Someone walked into the room. Guerrero had left explicit orders to be left alone. It was Reverend Mother Nisha. Her black robes flapped in an nonexistent breeze. Nisha walked up to Guerrero. She stopped only inches from her face.

"This is quite a mess." Nisha said. "Millions are dead below. I wonder how soon the Fish speakers will charge you with war crimes. The empire still has the death penalty."

Guerrero looked up at her. Her eyes were red rimmed with tears she refused to cry.

Nisha paused before she continued. "We may be able to keep this quiet. Your troops are loyal. They won't talk. The Human Defense Alliance has deep political roots. We can cover this up. Trellian is a backwater planet. They have no interstellar communications. They won't be able to tell anyone." Nisha said. She smiled a grim smile. "There's only one thing." She said.

"What?" Guerrero asked. She already knew the answer.

"If I do this, you belong to me now. Not the Alliance, not the slayers, but me." Nisha growled. "You will obey me in all things without question." Nisha waited for her answer.

After a moment Guerrero nodded in the affirmative. "Yes." She said. "I am yours to command." Guerrero stood and bolted out of the room. She was filled with self loathing.

Nisha waited until the door to the room had closed before she sparkled, then disappeared in a flash of light. The First had grown quite tired of wearing the face of the reverend mother that had been killed by a senior partner.


	8. Chapter 8

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

Bene Gesserit proverb

The Old Naib watched them come for weeks now. As the leader of the Church of Saint Lucillia, it was his responsibility to keep an eye on things. The Church, formally known as the Church of Universal Light, was his to protect. His sacred duty was to spread the word of the revelation of the slayer Saint Lucillia who gave her life to protect the world. In the twenty plus years since her awful immolation at the hands of the Destroyer the old Naib watched as his church grew in to something huge and strange. The humble building where he met Lucillia was long ago replaced by a mega-structure that held tens of thousands of worshipers. The hallways and courtyards were full of strangers, full of people he didn't know and didn't care to know. At one time he was able to preach from the pulpit. Now the only place where he had command was the small garden in the back of the parish.

As the Naib worked in his garden, a shadow fell over him. He looked up at one of the new people that had infiltrated his church over the last decade. They called themselves "guides of the way people." They considered themselves missionaries. As far as he was concerned, they were just another cult.

"Brother, why do you labor so?" The man asked.

His name was Abdul-Malik. He was over two meters tall with broad shoulders, rough hands and a thick beard. He was one of the new people that had invaded the church. He considered himself a servant of the one true master.

"This is my work." The old Naib said. "This is the only work left to me. This is the only work that brings me happiness"

"There is no way to be content in this world." Malik uttered. The Naib could hear the undertones of contempt in his voice. "Paradise, true paradise can only be found in the shadow of the sword. That is how you convert the unbelievers."

The Naib worked for a while turning the fertile soil over with his small tools and planting an occasional seed here and there. A thought finally occurred to him.

"How do you plan to bring paradise to the world?" He asked.

Malik grinned. The Naib could see his rotten teeth.

"Today, the true believers will open the gates of paradise. The blood of the martyrs will wash Arrakis clean. "Malik said.

The Naib had heard enough of that type of talk over the last few weeks. These new people were gearing themselves up for something deadly, something he wanted no part of.

"Peace be unto you, brother." Malik said as he turned and walked away.

The Naib watched him as he walked away and wondered to himself how could Malik move so accurately since his eyes had been cut out? The Naib watched the jeweled curved knife flop against Malik's waist as he disappeared.

"I really don't like these bringers." He thought to himself.

There were four of them in the market place that afternoon. Three men and one woman stood in the open air market of the Arrakis capital city. It was noisy place, it was a crowded place. Around them the sounds and smells of life were loud and pungent. They stood in the middle of the square among racks of spiced desert scorpions and crying babies. In unison, they parted their robes revealing a thick padding of high explosives they wore around their waist.

One of the men, brown from the desert sun with deeply wrinkled skin, yelled at the top of his voice:

"The gates of paradise have opened!"

All four of them pulled the detonation cord to the explosives. Their bodies exploded as the shrapnel they carried blossomed into a killing field. Fire and smoke filled the air. Hundreds of people died instantly. Ball bearings hurled by the explosions butchered the flesh of thousands more. For a long time there was silence, and then came the moans of agony of the dying.

The blood of the martyrs had filled the streets.

Liam stood as the Bene Gesserit began to leave. He wanted to ask them something.

"Tell me Paloma." He said. His voice was harsh, demanding. "Tell me the secret history of the _Kwisatz Haderach."_

Paloma stopped, turned and looked at him as if he had uttered an ultimate blasphemy. Her dark gray eyes focused intensely on him like a bird of prey.

"What are you talking about?" She asked innocently. "The history of the _Kwisatz Haderach_ is public knowledge. It starts with Paul Mau 'dib…"

"Liar!" Liam screamed. The force of his voice was overwhelming. Everyone in the room felt an increase in tension. Adrenaline began to seep into the blood of the slayers.

"They trusted you to save the world! The Bene Gesserit were given a holy mission by the Powers That Be! You used that knowledge to increase your hold on the human race."

Liam looked to Buffy and Motorria before he spoke again.

"The slayers did it right." He said. He turned again to face Reverend Mother Paloma. "They created the _Kwisatz Haderach_ in one generation and in its true form. You discarded the magic given to you and decided to breed for something you could control. "

Reverend mother Paloma stood still for long moments. Her mind pricked with the knowledge of certain classified files hidden away at the main Chapterhouse. There was no way this boy could know about those files.

"For thousands of years, you've held the keys to paradise in your hands. You allowed the source of Evil to persist so that you could play power games. Well, game over. Today, with me, the gates of paradise will open."

A loud explosion rocked the room. It came from outside. Everyone rushed to the windows. They could see a plume of smoke rising from the city. They could hear the screams of hundreds of people dying.

"This is what you allowed to persist." Liam said grimly to Paloma who turned her face away from him.

There was blood in the marketplace.


	9. Chapter 9

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Over the exit of the Arakeen landing field, crudely carved as though with a poor instrument, there was an inscription that Muad'Dib was to repeat may times. He saw it that first night on Arrakis, having been brought to the ducal command post to participate in his father's first staff conference. The words of the inscription were a plea to those leaving Arrakis, but they fell with a dark import on the eyes of a boy who had just escaped a close brush with death. They said: "O you who know what we suffer here, do not forget us in your prayers."

-from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

They had to see the prisoner.

Hours ago there was an explosion in the capital city marketplace. Suicide bombers had killed themselves along with several hundred people for no apparent reason. The fish speakers had the entire area under lockdown. Whatever body parts they could find, were stored away at Fish Speaker command until an investigation could be launched. Surayya remembered the last time there was civil unrest. The entire planet was under martial law for three years after the destruction of the "Leit-Kynes" by a multi gigaton warhead. She along with other slayers were trapped on Arrakis that entire time. People disappeared in the middle of the night without warning. Suspects were executed without trial. It was madness.

Surayya prayed that that madness would not come again.

They turned the final corner leading to the holding cell. Their group was small. It consisted only of Liam, Buffy and Surayya. As they turned the corner they could see several slayers standing guard over the prisoner. Chief among them was his childhood friend and captain of his honor guard Colette Sereas. Colette looked up at him and her eyes went wide. She made a noise like a high pitched squeal.

Liam never knew a slayer could move that fast.

She slammed into Liam at full speed knocking him off his feet. For long moments, she hugged him with everything she had. Liam could swear he could hear his ribs starting to crack. Colette eased her hug. She lifted her head and looked down at him. There were tears in her eyes.

"Yeah, I'm ok." Liam said. He stroked her face. He dried her tears.

"If you two would like a moment, I'm sure we can come back and interview the psychotic slayer that killed you later." Surayya said dryly. She stood there with her arms crossed.

Colette looked over at Surayya, then Liam. "Looks like I'm back on the clock." She said. "I'm still your bodyguard."

Liam started to object. Colette gave him a look he knew well.

"Ok. Ok. "Liam said. He smiled at her. Liam led the way. He closed the final distance to the slayer that killed him.

Ashoka Lang paced her cell like a caged tiger. Her body showed bruises obtained during her capture and afterwards. Even as the other slayers were beating her, she never made a sound. Ashoka looked past Liam and directly at Surayya. Both Buffy and Surayya could tell that she really hated slayers.

"What happened to you?" Liam asked. He leaned in closer to the cell bars. Colette rushed to be by his side. She held her Lexan knife at the ready.

She didn't have a scythe. Second generation slayers didn't get scythes'.

"How did they hurt you?" Liam asked. Liam had been in love many times as young man so he knew the secret to hate. Only a great love can create a great hate. She stilled loved her sisters, but now the energy of that love was inverted by a pain beyond bearing.

Liam was a solider as well. He knew of only one thing that could turn him against his comrades in arms.

"How did they betray you?" He asked. Ashoka eyes shifted. She looked straight at the slayers beyond Liam. Her blank expression hid the fury of her burning hatred. She remembered what they did. She remembered burning in hell. She remembered watching the "Memories of Dawn" abandon her. She remembered her promise to the First.

"Tell me." Liam said. Her eyes focused on him. "Tell me what they did."

"Quor'Toth" she said. "They left me in Quor'Toth.

Liam stepped back stunned. Buffy struggled to remember where she had heard that name before. Surayya stood there with her hand over her mouth.

"We would never leave a slayer behind!" Surayya said as she stepped up to the cell.

"You have no idea what we do in the outer darkness, how we suffer!" Ashoka hissed. "You are safe and comfortable here on Arrakis! The hatred build in Ashoka so, her hands began to tremble.

"You bask in the glow of your precious Destroyer while we fight and die in worlds already damned!" Ashoka lashed out and grabbed Surayya by the throat. Surayya could feel her windpipe being crushed. The power of the first still flowed through Ashoka. Surayya twisted then teleported out of reach of her. She was the only slayer in the room that could do that.

"It was that place." Liam said. "It soaked into every cell of her. She is sick with the darkness. There is only one way to cure her."

Buffy was a fraction too late. She knew what Liam was planning. She had watched him practice as a little boy. He was the Kwisatz Haderach in its pure form. He was a creature of magic.

A bright light filled the room. When it cleared, both Ashoka and Liam were gone.

They appeared in front of the hotel at night. Liam stood behind Ashoka with a firm grip on her arms. Liam was struck by the huge amounts of water vapor there was in the air. He was nearly drowning in the humidity.

The hotel glowed with a clean white purifying light. It radiated from a woman who was as close to a higher being as he would ever want to meet.

He waited until the light faded then knocked on the door. He had to time this right. He had traveled here only to meet her. He did not want to meet the other members of Angel Investigations.

Cordelia Chase opened the door to the Hyperion Hotel. She was a young woman with a round face, big eyes and a rather large bosom. Her face was kind but Liam could tell that she bore a pain that was divinely inspired, a pain that was slowly killing her.

She took one look at Liam and the strange girl next to him. She knew instantly the girl was a slayer. The powers inside of her recognized that the slayer was also touched by the same darkness that polluted Angel's son. She had just finished healing him. Her energies were so prime that they ignited without having to be asked.

A warm white glow enveloped all three of them. When it faded, the hatred had gone out of Ashoka's eyes.

"Thank you Old Mother." Liam said using the ancient freman honorific. "Your sacrifices to come will be a blessing for generations yet born.

Liam invoked his power. He and Ashoka both disappeared.

"Angel!" Cordy yelled back inside the hotel.

"What?" Angel answered.

"You didn't tell me you had a baby brother, and you didn't tell me he was a cutie!" Cordelia said.

Angel ignored her.

Liam walked her to the medical wing. All the while he kept his arm around her and whispered comfort to her. When the medics had taken her, Liam turned to the slayers that had escorted him.

"My commission from the Destroyer is to sheppard the slayers." He said. "I take that responsibility seriously. "

Buffy nodded in agreement. The Destroyer had given her her own set of instructions.

"Ashoka spoke of the slayer fleet and how they fight against the darkness of the worlds. What is exactly going on with the fleet?" Liam asked. He turned to Surayya. "Contact Commander Guerrero, get a feel for the missions they have been running lately. "

Surayya nodded.

"We need to understand the state of the union." He said. "I want my slayers well."


	10. Chapter 10

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Love is the form of Eternity in which we abide."

The Destroyer

"Trinity"

Liam remembered being a kid.

He was raised in Sietch Kindle in the deep desert. His mother was Buffy Summers from Earth. His genetic father was Paul Maud 'dib of House Atreides. His mother was a slayer and his father was the emperor prophet that conquered the galaxy.

He could remember many long lazy days of his youth. He fondly remembered him, Buffy and Surayya training and playing in the desert. They would often hunt and fight each other for fun.

They were predators at play.

His childhood was not like other children. As a rule, Liam would do morning calisthenics with the slayers at sietch Kindle then spend hours on end learning the basics of hand to hand combat. When Surayya got tired or bored or called away on a mission, Lisa would step up and train him. When she was not available there were hundreds of other slayers at the sietch that would line up to train the _wunderkind_. Fortunately for Liam, he was not the only child there. Other slayers had children; he had a huge extended family with tens of brothers and sisters.

In the years since the return of the Destroyer to the world, the slayers of Arrakis had settled into a daily routine. They took upon themselves the daily exercises of creating a civilization. They began to build their world.

Liam had been tracking the vampire for hours now. As part of his training, Liam and Surayya hunted a vampire that killed in the outer desert. This particular creature was powerful and ruthless. It had slaughtered a string of villages outside of the capital city. The creature had evaded the slayers for months now. It had almost killed the first set of slayers sent after it. Liam hunted with Surayya under the prodding of his mother. Buffy believed that the boy had to get his hands dirty at some point. He had to learn that the slayer game was dangerous. He had to learn what it meant to hunt the dead.

Liam was only seven years old at the time.

Liam always teased whatever slayer was training him. He was particularly fond of teasing Surayya.

"C'mon Surry." He called her over the stilsuit radio. "You move like an old lady. Are all those voices in your head slowing you down?" Liam was being a smart ass. Surayya decided not to answer him.

Seven years ago, during the resurrection of the Destroyer, Surayya had undergone an accelerated evolution. She had been caught in an anti-entropic backwash. The mystical forces contained in every slayer began to expand, grow stronger.

Surayya became an Old One.

For one brief moment, she was as powerful as Illyria. In order to save herself she tapped into the unified mind of every slayer in existence. That galaxy of sheer will kept the memory of being human alive within her, so it counterbalanced the effects of the mystical forces trying to possess her. Because of that, Surayya was now a nexus between all slayers past, present and future in this universe and beyond.

Naturally it drove her mad.

Her Bene Gesserit training helped. Still, when she let her guard down she could still hear the buzzing of trillions of voices in her head. Sometimes these voices were useful. They often warned of future events and the wisdom they provided was priceless. Still she heard the song of a trillion voices ringing in her head like the echoes of an insistent creation.

Liam stopped at the top of a dune crest. Surayya could see him framed in moonlight. The boy was small for his age. He was thin and wiry with raven black hair. Surayya was not fooled by his fragile appearance. She knew the terrible powers that lay within him.

"I see him." Buffy said over her suit radio. She was not talking about Liam. She was talking about the target.

"Yep. He's about a hundred meters ahead." Surayya answered. "Looks like we caught him before he got a chance to feed." Surayya answered. Liam was monitoring the conversation. He turned his full attention to the monster they had come to kill. They spread out to approach the monster from multiple positions.

"Liam, stay back. Surayya and I will take the lead." Buffy said. Liam wasn't hearing it. He desperately wanted to prove to his mother that he wasn't just a kid.

"I can do this!" Liam said proudly. He pulled the stake from his suit pocket and charged the beast.

The vampire turned at Liam's approach. It moved faster than he could believe. It had an arm across his windpipe. Liam could feel himself choking. His stake was knocked out of his hand and was lying in the sand at his feet.

He remembered his training.

Liam jerked his shoulder forward in an attempt to flip the vampire off of him. He failed. The monster didn't budge. The vampire took it's free hand and pushed Liam's head to side exposing his neck. The vampire opened his mouth exposing it's long curved fangs.

Surayya came out of nowhere swinging her scythe. The first cut sliced of the vampire's right leg. It screamed as it let Liam go. Surayya followed through with the blades momentum, turned and cut the vampires head off in one smooth stroke.

It disappeared in a storm of dust.

Buffy had caught up with them. Her eyes were wide as she looked over at Liam and made sure he was unhurt.

"I swear Liam if you get killed, I will raise you from the dead then beat you to death! Don't ever do that again!" Buffy said. They could all hear her anger.

Surayya grabbed him by the scruff of the neck as they headed back to the sietch.

Liam snapped out his repose. His mind was back to current events. He turned and faced Surayya and said. "You know auntie, sometimes I can be a real jerk."

Surayya looked at him and then after a moment she smiled. "Yeah, I know." She said. Surayya stood over him a moment then patted him on his shoulder as she left the room. Liam sat in a chair next to the damaged slayer Ashoka Lang and watched her sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.**

The Stolen Journals

The "Memories of Dawn" hung in space above the scorched planet. It had started out as an errand of mercy for the Trellian colony. They were overrun with vampires and the slayers were there to help.

But, Things had gone wrong horribly fast.

Her ground forces were wiped out and the vampires were launching an assault on her flagship which was the pride of her fleet. Fleet commander Guerrero fired the "Memories of Dawn" weapon of last resort. She fired a high energy beam of anti-matter directly into the heart of a major population center.

Millions died.

She could see the hole she made from orbit. Where the stream of anti-protons touched down the land was seared raven black and still glowed with a hellish fire as anti matter combined with regular matter producing every subatomic particle imaginable. All life, down to the viral level was instantly destroyed. Bodies that would not decay lay in the streets of the ruined city.

In her captain's log, she referred to this as friendly fire.

The First, as Reverend Mother Nisha Braun, gilded up to Guerrero. She made not a sound as she moved.

For the last two days, the "Memory of Dawn" had been running humanitarian missions down to Trellian. They took whatever food and medical supplies they had planet side.

It was like putting a band aid on a torn throat. However, Guerrero insisted. She had to do something to appease her guilty conscious.

"We've been getting reports of a backlash building on Trellian." The First said. "Now would be an excellent time to test project 13."

Guerrero looked at her as if she was insane.

Project 13 was something commissioned by the Human Defense Alliance. In cold storage, five decks below her, a squad of super soldiers lay frozen. It seemed that years ago a tleilaxian scientist had isolated the gene markers that were common to 90% of all slayers. That information was used to create a squad of spice fueled berserkers. They kept them on ice for one clear reason.

When awakened, they killed everything in sight.

Guerrero shuttered at the thought of such creatures. They were slayers, girls like her, twisted by genetic engineering and ambition into monsters.

"No." Guerrero said. "They are monsters. It is better that they were never born."

"Do it!" Nisha hissed into Guerrero's ear. "Or the whole galaxy will know what you've done here!" The First could see the last shreds of self respect clinging to Guerrero.

"Don't forget who you really work for!" Nisha said. Guerrero could hear the implied threat.

After a moment she pressed a series of buttons. Four cryogenic pods were dumped from the ship and began a powered decent to the surface of Trellian.

"I wonder if there is any space left in hell for me." Guerrero thought to herself.

Surayya felt as light as a bubble.

She sat on an ancient mat surrounded by Bene Gesserit. This was her meditation time. This was the time she spent calming the voices within. From the journals of Leto II and millennia of experience the Bene Gesserit knew the only way to avoid possession by past lives was to form them into a self policing communality. Surayya did this by linking each voice to a muscle exercise and then folding them into a mentant data summation. One by one she calmed the voices within. But sometimes, a strong voice would break through and make herself known to her.

"Why do you kill us?" A voice cried out within her. "Why are the slayers killing us?" The voice of the slayer asked.

Surayya was sure this was not a voice from her pre-life. This was a voice from now.

"Trellian is burning!" The voice screamed. "Burning!" The voice was a high pitched scream that was suddenly cut off.

Surayya opened her eyes and stood up. The Bene Gesserit around her opened their eyes as well. They all felt a profound disturbance.

Surayya remembered something she asked Liam years ago back when they had first raised the Destroyer.

"_Ask him about the Trellian massacre." A voice inside of her said. A faceless slayer from the future rose up in her mind._

This was it. This was the prophecy from the future she had come to dread.

"I have to go now." Surayya said to the Bene Gesserit with her.

"The future is calling." She said.


	12. Chapter 12

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**Ethan Rayne:** I've got to learn to just do the damage and leave town. It's the stay-'n'-gloat that gets me every time.

His imaginary friend woke him from a sound sleep.

Liam slept in a special room in the royal palace. It was an armored room with shatter proof plaz windows, a self contained ventilation system, encrypted communications panels and a full power backup system. Liam's bedroom had a full data feed from Fishspeaker command as well as a bank of ultra high resolution displays with secured satellite feeds. He could run an entire battle fleet from here.

Tonight, all was quiet. He slept soundly on his oversize bed. Outside his door, slayers from his security detail stood watch. Liam dreamt of the blue and white Atreides flag fluttering in a sandstorm. He saw the flag being slowly being covered in sand. As the sand covered the flag, his vision became dark until all that was left of his dream was darkness and the faint sound of screams. Liam woke from his nightmare.

Pale moonlight illuminated his bedroom. In the shadows, Liam could tell that someone else was in the room with him. Liam was not afraid. He recognized the figure in the dark. It was his childhood imaginary friend.

The figure moved out of the shadows and into the pale moonlight to reveal the boyhood face of Leto II.

"I was wondering when you would return to me." Liam said as he sat up in the bed. "Of course by now you do realize that I know who you really are?"

Liam recalled all the times he played with his imaginary friend as a child. He remembered all the times they ran and played in the desert. He remembered all the times he would sneak away from the slayers to the mythical caves of Jacurutu where no one could find him and because of that received his first spanking from Buffy and a permanent security detail. His imaginary friend had caused him trouble as a child but together they had many wonderful adventures.

The thing that wore the face of Leto II smiled at Liam as it sat down on a nearby chair.

"So, this is what you have become?" The First said. "The young master plays the game of thrones and has made himself the prince of Arrakis." The First smiled. It showed teeth.

Liam made a dismissive sound and said "I am not a prince, or the third Atreides emperor. I am but a humble sheppard."

The First laughed.

"You look so much like your father." It said.

Liam thought for a moment. They something occurred to him.

"Why are you here?" He asked the First.

"I came here tonight to let you know that I am going to kill everyone you love and then my sweet Lilith will gut you." The First said as a matter of fact.

Liam rolled his eyes.

"And you wonder why people want to kill you." He said.

Angelus had been listening to the conversation. Since his awakening, Angelus had laid quiet in Liam's mind. But now this was too much. Liam was actually talking to the source of all evil as if it was sane. Angelus had to speak. He had secrets he wanted to explore.

Liam's body language shifted as sharp memories overcame him. Angelus had found a way to take control of Liam's body during the trial of the Gom Jabbar. Angelus would never be helpless again.

Under the control of Angelus, Liam extended his hand and drove it right through the immaterial form of the First. Just to make sure he swung his hand back and forth several times. His hand went right through the First every time.

"So, Casper." Angelus said. "Lie to any good vampires lately?"

"Who are you?" The First asked puzzled.

"You don't remember me do you?" Angelus asked. "You tried to get captain broody pants to kill himself. You tried to get Angel to kill me!" Angelus was furious.

It took t while for the First to remember.

"The Beast." The First said finally realizing who he was talking to. "Do you know how many impossible things I had to arrange to make Cordelia Chase a higher power so that she could get that rock head to turn out the sun? Do you know everything that had to be done to get a vampire pregnant? Conner was my master work and my backup plan."

It took Angelus a moment to figure out what the First was saying.

"Conner was going to be your vessel on Earth wasn't he?" Angelus asked. "Too bad Jasmine beat you to the punch. You higher power types can be such selfish jerks. I guess it comes from seeing the big picture."

"Join me Angelus." The First said as he leaned forward. "Together, we can rule the galaxy!"

Angelus leaned back and laughed. "I saw that movie. " He said. "The guy with the black helmet turned out to be a punk and a disappointment to the dark side. I would have eaten Luke and banged Leila." Angelus thought for a moment. "And then eaten Leia."

"I don't need your permission." The First said. The image of Leto II shifted then flared to a brilliant blue white light. The First stabbed forward. It was attempting to possess Liam directly. The energies of the First entered Liam and were shattered into a trillion pieces.

The First withdrew. Its face was covered in fear.

"How _large_ are you?" The First asked. This was something _new_. When it entered Liam its energies refracted and shattered as it attempted to connect to the infinite Liams spread out over an infinite number of universes. He had touched _a_ Liam which occupied this room but the Liam before him was but a taste of the infinitely cross connected super being that was THE Liam.

The First drew back as it knew terror for the first time in its existence.

"The slayers don't have a clue do they?" The First asked of him. "They don't have a clue as to what you _really_ are?" The First was amazed as a slow realization came over him.

Liam was the real monster here.

The shock of the First's entrance into him had driven Angelus back into the recesses of his mind. Liam looked out from behind his own eyes.

"I was built to destroy you." He said.

The First smiled. "Catch me if you can." It said as it disappeared in a flash of light. Liam sat by the side of the bed for a moment. Then he laid himself down and went back to sleep.

On the other side of the door to his room, one of the women in his security detail had an ear pressed against the door and was listening intensely.

"I think Liam is talking to someone." She said.

"Let him sleep." Colette said. "He's had a long day considering that business with Ashoka. That whole rising from the dead thing probably wore him out."

"Well, look on the bright side." Colette said. She had known Liam since they were kids. "At least he's not talking to his imaginary friend anymore."


	13. Chapter 13

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**The First****(as****Cassie****)**: _[after trying to trick Willow into believing Tara wants her to kill herself]_ I can see it now. Candlelight, the Indigo Girls playing, picture of your dead girlfriend on your bloody lap... _[mocking]_ Oh, baby, you left such a big hole. It hurt so bad! _[serious]_ You don't know hurt. This last year's gonna seem like cake after what I put you and your friends through, and I am not a fan of easy death. Fact is, the whole good versus evil, balancing the scales thing? I'm over it. I'm done with the mortal coil. But believe me, I'm going for a big finish.

**Willow**: "From beneath you, it devours."

**The First (as Cassie)**: Oh, not "it"... ME

"Conversations with Dead People"

BTVS S7E07

She sat before the whole world.

Buffy Summers sat before the unified operations screen. Before her was a huge block diagram of every slayer mission both past present and future. The screen showed the current deployment of every slayer ship in the fleet. She watched the numbers superimposed on the tiny green triangles, which were slayer ships, change as the ship position updated. She was seeing information in real time. In a far corner of the screen there was a black spot. No data came from that point.

"Why is this missing?" Buffy asked the young slayer that operated the screen. "The "Memories of Dawn" was sent there. Seems like you would keep tags on your flagship?"

The young girl hesitated a moment as she operated her keyboard. No combination of keystrokes would generate the required information.

"I'm sorry ma'am." She said. "It seems that all operational information on the Trellian colony has been blacked out. Which is strange."

"Why strange?" Buffy asked.

"Because this is a command level terminal." The girl answered. "This is information used by the fleet admiral. Nothing get's blacked out."

Buffy stood and paced around the room. Her thoughts raced. Liam wanted to know the current state of the slayer fleet. From what she could see, the slayers had thousands of ships spread throughout the galaxy. Some of the data indicated that some of the ships were not even in this _universe_. The slayer fleet was spread very thin. They were spread out so far, and doing so many things that there were huge portions of the galaxy that had almost no slayer presence.

The slayers had left huge portions of the world unguarded.

"Something else ma'am." The young girl said. Buffy drew closer to the screen. "Yesterday, the "Sietch Tabr" took off towards Trellian under the command of Surayya Atreides."

Buffy frowned. "That girl just can't stand still." She thought. "Unless Trellian is handing out bags of candy and puppies, Surayya would no reason to go there. Something _bad_ is happening there."

Buffy was about to comment when the boom, boom, boom from a series of explosions came from outside. The technician punched up a view of the city from orbit. Four plumes of smoke rose from separate positions in the city. The technician zoomed in on one of the columns of smoke. They gasped. They could see the tiny figures of bloodied bodies laying in the street.

The terrorists had struck again.

"This is madness!" Buffy thought. Things were spiraling out of control.

The "Stiech Tabr" dropped out of hyperspace a thousand kilometers above the "Memories of Dawn." Surayya fired attitude jets forcing her ship off a collision course. It was an old tactic to drop out of hyperspace directly above an enemy then drift into their blind spot. Surayya didn't consider the flagship of the slayer fleet to be an enemy but it always paid to be cautious.

"This is the "Memories of Dawn" to unknown ship, identify yourself!" came a voice over her radio. Apparently, the slayers were a _lot_ sharper than she had imagined. Her only hope was the fact that the "Sietch Tabr" was a Fishspeaker ship and hence not in the Slayer database. Surayya's command console showed the "Memories of Dawn" powering up her missile banks. Surayya opened a communication channel.

"This is Surayya Atreides commanding the "Sietch Tabr" she said. After a moment the voice of fleet commander _Guerrero_ came over the communications channel.

"Surayya, what are you doing here?" _Guerrero_ asked.

"Following up on a prophecy." Surayya answered.

"You can't be here." Guerrero said. "This is a restricted area. This mission is classified."

Guerrero's tone sounded strained. Surayya had been trained by Leto II in the ways of Bene Gesserit voice stress analysis. Guerrero was saying with her tone "Please, go away. I can't talk openly." There was a sharp undertone of fear in her voice. What was it here she didn't want Surayya to see?

"_Ask her about the __Trellian massacre.__"_ A nameless voice said to her. Surayya knew that Guerrero was trained by Leto II as well. In addition, she used to be her executive officer, her second in command. Surayya prayed that Guerrero remembered her training.

Guerrero's voice came back over the intercom. Her voice had an odd rhythm to it. Surayya detected it immediately. Guerrero was using a Bene Gesserit voice encryption.

"The planet is off limits. I repeat the planet is off limits. Do not under any circumstances go to coordinates 127 by 256 by 12. I repeat…" Guerrero said.

"Got it!" Surayya thought. The "Stiech Tabr" peeled out of orbit and shot down to the exact coordinates specified by Guerrero. Before Surayya turned off the comm channel she could swear she heard a screech coming from the "Memories of Dawn."

The First screamed in rage.

"How dare you!" it screamed at Guerrero. "You sent her to the planet!"

Guerrero smiled then stepped forward. She had finally gotten the courage to confront the First.

"I will face what I've done here, but I won't be bullied by a piece of shit like you!" She said. "Now get the hell off my bridge!" A gang of security personnel began to surround the First.

"You idiot child." The First said. "You have no idea what I am." The First transformed to reveal its true form. A horned red beast covered the bridge. Everyone jumped back in surprise. "I would have let you live just a little bit longer but not now. Now, I start the Apocalypse fueled by the blood you've spilled here. Trellian blood will open the gate and I will be free!"

The First disappeared in a flash of light.

"Great." Guerrero muttered to herself. "Another apocalypse to stop." She turned to face her crew and ordered them down to the planet.


	14. Chapter 14

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

It was a time of sorceresses whose powers were real. The measure of them is seen in the fact they never boasted how they grasped the firebrand.

"Appendix II: The Religion of Dune"

It was scene of utter devastation.

Surayya stood next to her ship dazed by the devastation to the Trellian capital city. On her way to the surface she could see the ten kilometer blast crater caused by the "Memories of Dawn" antimatter weapon. Surayya was shocked at the level of damage done to the colony. The blast crater was still glowing from the heat. Black smoke filled the sky. She saw hundreds of thousands of dead and dying lying in the streets. She had to land over a hundred kilometers away to avoid the residual radiation.

"What the hell have they done?" Surayya asked herself as she stood next to her ship. She little time to ponder. The voice of Guerrero came over her radio.

"This is "Memories of Dawn."" She said. "Surayya, you've got to get out of there now!" Guerrero sounded frantic. "There are…monsters there." Her voice was hesitant. "You are not safe!"

"Since when have I run from monsters?" Surayya answered. "Killing monsters is what I do, is what _we_ do."

There was a crackling over her radio. Guerrero was choosing her next words carefully.

"We, the Human defense alliance, wanted our own soldiers, in case we had to go against the slayers. So we took slayers and _amplified_ them. We modified a few slayers with surgery and gene therapy. The Tleilaxu helped. What we ended up with were monsters designed to hunt down and kill slayers. We underestimated the forces we were dealing with. We created monsters and they were uncontrollable. They will kill everything in their path. Surayya, get out of there now!"

"What happened to you?" Surayya asked. She was saddened. She knew her old friend was made of better stuff than this.

"Power corrupts." She said. "You have no idea of what we've been doing all those years since you left the fleet. Remember the first Slayer-Fish Speaker war when Dracula had taken over Fish Speaker command twenty years ago? Remember when the sky above Arrakis was filled with thousands of shiny black ships? You never asked what we had to do to get those ships. We had to make _deals_ Surayya! We had to _compromise_ in order to live in the galaxy. There are forces out there which against we have no defense."

Surayya could hear the pain in her old friend's voice. Something moved to her left. Surayya could hear something approaching. She grabbed her scythe.

"No regrets old friend. You were deceived. Any idea as to where the First is headed?" She asked.

"The only place I can think of is the IX shipyards. The Human Alliance meets there." Guerrero paused for a moment. She muttered under her breath. "It wouldn't dare…." Guerrero remembered the plans they had made to destroy the black hole at the center of the Galaxy.

"Go!" Surayya commanded. She didn't need an explanation. Guerrero's tone was enough for her. Hundreds of kilometers above her, the "Memories of Dawn" changed direction. It burst out of the atmosphere and jumped into hyperspace. Surayya could see it leave as a small bright star.

She felt it a split second before its claws swiped at the back of her neck. Surayya teleported then turned to face the monsters that had snuck up on her. There were two of them and they were a nightmare. They were both over three meters tall covered in a hardened blood red shell. Slimy gray muscles pulled at their exoskeleton. It was hard to believe that they were once girls like her. The monsters came at her moving faster than she imagined possible.

Surayya charged directly at them at full speed. Her feet kicked up tiny puffs of dust. Just before contact, she leapt into the air and brought her full mass and the point of her scythe down on the head of the first monster. It's blood chilling howl filled the air as its head split open. Surayya watched it die before she turned and slammed the heel of her foot down across the face of the second monster. The beast pivoted with the blow. It turned and grabbed Surayya's leg. For a second, she thought it was going to bite her leg off. It had teeth larger than the teeth of a great white shark. The creature slung her away like a broken doll. Surayya arced into the sky then slammed into the ground. In once pounce the monster was upon her. It had her pinned to the ground with its weight.

That's when she began to change. Surayya was an Old One who remembered being human. The energies of the slayer locked inside her, the energies held by every slayer, had been exponentially increased when they created the Destroyer twenty years ago. Surayya relaxed her hold on that manic fire and it consumed her.

Her eyes glowed with the green-white energy of creation. She grabbed the monster by the throat and squeezed. Its voice became a wet gurgle. Surayya stood. The monster was on its knees before her. She didn't need a scythe this time. Surayya brought the fingers of her hand stiffly together and drove it into and through the monsters throat. Pieces of red-green flesh splattered to the ground. She clinched her hand into a fist and pulled it out of the hole in the monsters throat. It was dead before it hit the ground.

In the distance, Surayya could hear the howling of the other two beasts. She turned to the call of monsters and smiled. As she hurried to get a taste of battle Surayya didn't even see the face of the girl hidden beneath the monster she just killed.

**The IX Shipyards:**

The First appeared suddenly as a shape out of nothing. It still wore the face of Nisha Braun. The First moved down the long dark hallways of the Human Defense Alliance towards its goal. As it moved it could see through the plaz windows row after row of Slayer battleships in dock for maintenance.

"The days before these slayers were much simpler." The First thought. "I could hide in the dark and torture the humans one by one. Now, they organize against me. They even got Angelus out of hell." The removal of Angelus from hell was the reason for his current attack. "I should have stayed on Earth and killed Buffy when I had the chance." The First was full of regrets. "I should have gotten Illyria to kill her."

The first turned a corner as it finally reached it goal. Before it stood a black security door with a high encryption keypad. The first pushed its fingers into the metal box and through the enchanted stones under the circuit board. The First was detected by the magic. The steel door opened. The First walked into the darkness. The door closed behind it. It began to chant in Latin. A schematic drawn in blood lit up the floor. He remembered the ancient magic of the Senior Partners.

Billions of years ago, the Senior partners arose. They were the first life forms to evolve in the universe made from the bones of the Destroyer. The Senior Partners became masters of politics and technology and magic. They had spells of a dark and awful nature that could move the stars themselves. They used that magic to build an empire of trillions. Until one day, that magic turned on them and destroyed them worlds at a time.

The First knew the secret of that magic. It required the blood of the innocent to be spilled. To that end, the Senior Partners build dozens of blood words, enchanted planets set apart for the explicit purpose of being colonized by life forms that they would sacrifice by the millions.

Trellian was one such world. After a hundred million years, the magics of that place were still active. And thanks to the ego of Fleet Commander Guerrero, he had his blood sacrifice. The First completed his ritual. Over two hundred thousand light years away, near the galactic core, five stars began to move towards the deadly mouth of the black hole.


	15. Chapter 15

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Understand what this responsibility means to me. I am responsible for the destiny of the only people between the world and absolute darkness. I have been made the captain of the guard, the shepherd of the flock and the gateway of destiny. The slayers do not live unless they come through me. My mother tells me measures have been put into place to assure that. The burden of that responsibility overwhelms me sometimes.

So I did what was necessary to put myself in a position that allowed me access to the resources needed to shepherd the slayers through the next several hundred years. I still hear the voice of the Destroyer. I still execute the charge given to me. That is why I became the third Atreides emperor. I did it to save the world.

-Emperor Liam Atreides

"Points of Clarification" House Atreides edition.


	16. Chapter 17

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**Enemies strengthen you. Allies weaken.** I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I act as I do in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire with but one wish — the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what actually happened, but I doubt that you understand it.

The Stolen Journals

She awakened from her sleep. Her eyes scanned the room. Before she was fully awake, she had already mapped several ways to escape. She ran her hands along her body feeling for wounds and found none. Before her eyes were fully open, Ashoka Lang knew her mission status and tactical objectives. She was and would always be a soldier.

She sat up in the bed. Her raven black hair flowed over her shoulders. Her eyes were wide open. They were almond shaped with a green tint shot through with rust brown. She dropped to the floor. Her legs felt fine. The hospital robe she wore hid nothing. Her lithe young body lay bare beneath it.

She remembered being dead. She remembered burning in hell. She remembered the blood of the slayers on her hands. She remembered the First, then a bright healing light that removed the darkness from her soul. She remembered Liam Atreides and the words he had said to her. She wished to speak with him.

A nurse came in to check on her. Ashoka grabbed her in a head lock, with her forearm across the girl's throat. Ashoka kept the pressure up until the nurse stopped moving. She laid the nurse on the bed, grabbed her clothes and checked her pulse. The nurse was still alive. Ashoka was feeling merciful.

She entered the hallway and began her search for Liam.

Buffy stood on a balcony that over looked the royal courtyard. It was evening. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon only moments ago. She leaned over the guardrail as a cool breeze caressed her skin. Her short blonde hair fluttered slightly. Buffy had her white battle armor exposed. It generally appeared whenever she became upset.

"My boy is becoming a man." She thought then chided herself. Now she knew how all mothers felt. "I'm losing my baby!" Buffy looked down at the Fishspeaker troops performing a changing of the guard. One small clump of women stepped forward as one, saluted, and then was replaced by a second group of women. It was all done in silence. The women moved as one. Their precision was beautiful.

"Mom, I'm so sorry I gave you so much grief." Buffy thought. She remembered when Acathla was going to suck the world into a hell dimension. She remembered all the lip she gave her mother. She remembered, afterwards, running away to Los Angeles without a single word. Buffy just grabbed some cloths and left. Joyce must have been out of her mind with grief.

"If only I knew how much a parent loved their child, I would have trusted her with all of my secrets." Emotions flooded through her as she remembered that place in her heart held by Joyce. Her eyes began to mist. Buffy had wounds that had never healed.

The sun had set. Within minutes the entire sky had turned ink black. The stars above shone in the dark Arrakis sky like a billion colored gems. Buffy could see the green fuzzy glow of the crab nebula near the horizon. Above her head, was the faint white light of the Milky Way Galaxy.

A tingle ran up her spine. It was not the night air. She felt the presence of evil. A point in the sky above her burst into a bright blue whit light that blinded her. The light collapsed into a burning point thousands of meters across in a geostationary orbit above the royal palace.

"What the what!" Buffy exclaimed.

"It is Kralizec, the typhoon struggle." Liam said as he walked up beside her. Buffy looked at him. "The First is free. Soon it will manifest its true form."

Across thousands of planets, the same scene was being repeated. A bright point of light thousands of meters wide appeared. Each point was a portal leading back to the prison of the First.

"It is coming." Liam said slowly and eerily, "And it is larger than worlds" His eyes glowed a faint soft blue.

Buffy was afraid. It was a simple fear. It was an ancient fear. It was the fear that all mothers had. She feared that her baby was sick.

"What are you?" Buffy asked. "Are you something _worse_ than the First?" She dared to ask.

"I am the voice of the multiverse." Liam said. "I am the fist of infinity. Look into yourself, you'll find me standing there."

Buffy remembered. She remembered being a waitress in Los Angeles named Annie. She remembered serving a slice of apple pie to a drifter that had wandered into the diner and had sat at one of her booths. She took his order like she had taken a thousand orders before. She looked down at his face with no intent of seeing it.

Liam looked back up at her.

Buffy stepped back. "What are you?" She asked.

"I am the **Kwisatz Haderach **in its intended form. I am everywhere at once. I am a god." Liam spoke with a certainty that made goose bumps rise along Buffy's arms.

For reasons she couldn't understand, Buffy rushed forward and hugged him in the tightest grip she had. She prayed "Please God, don't let me lose him."

Liam could feel the other parts of himself moving through time preparing for the war to come. That's how time travel worked. It worked on the principal of mutual cooperation. If something needed done a Liam from another universe would step in and do the work. He had not and would never travel back to his own past. Another Liam had done that for him. This Liam had never met Dracula.

Above them, huge wet tentacles emerged from the burning point in the sky. The First was on its way.


	17. Chapter 18

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**This is the fallacy of power: ultimately it is effective only in an absolute, a limited universe. But the basic lesson of our relativistic universe is that things change. Any power must always meet a greater power.** Paul Muad'Dib taught this lesson to the Sardaukar on the Plains of Arrakeen. His descendants have yet to learn the lesson for themselves.

The Preacher at Arrakeen

The "Memory of Dawn" swept in from hyperspace. Commander Guerrero stood over a set of navigation charts that outlined the ship's path through real, hyper and para space. She chose the fastest route to IX in order to intercept the First. She didn't care that she had to jump through several dimensions to do so.

A nova burst of light illuminated the night side of the ship yards that the slayers used for repairs. Any hint of surprise was gone. Guerrero didn't care. She had a simple tactic. She was going to slam into the First head long with everything she had and to hell with the rest.

That was before she saw the tentacles hanging hundreds of kilometers across the sky and the thousands of other holes in space where other tentacles were appearing.

"A day late and a dollar short I would say." Guerrero turned towards the voice. It was Liam. He had appeared on a ship that had just left a space where the speed of light was infinite.

"Somebody should put a bell on him." Guerrero thought. She was smart. She saw the sky outside and accepted the fact that Liam was here.

"So how bad is it?" She asked.

"Kralizec." Liam said. He removed the hood he wore. His face was still hidden in shadow. Guerrero hung her head. She had freman ancestors. She knew her oral history. Kralizec was the typhoon struggle, the war at the end of time.

"What can I do?" She asked. Guerrero forgot all about the blood she had on her hands. She was a commander, she was a slayer. She made a choice to win.

"Work for me." Liam said. His words echoed the First. "Give me absolute, total and final control of the Human Defense Alliance. We will need to act as one if we are to fight the future."

Guerrero walked over to Liam and pressed her hand against his face. She touched warm dry skin. This Liam seemed a little different. There were touches of gray in his hair. A scar ran along his cheek.

Her body recognized the man before her as Liam Atreides. She remembered meeting him when he was a kid. She remembered him riding in to protect the slayers when Dracula had taken over Fish Speaker command.

"How large are you?" She asked. "How many of you are there?"

"I am infinite." He said. "I embrace worlds."

Guerrero straightened her back. She stood a little taller than usual. "Yes." She said. "I am yours to command."

Liam gave his first order. Moments later, star fire leapt from the "Memories of Dawn" and incinerated the Human Defense Alliance command center on IX.

They swarmed the royal palace like ants.

"I see them moving in the shadows." Buffy said. She looked down from the royal balcony to the courtyard below. In the shadows, she could see thousands of black shapes sneaking up on them. It was the bringers. They had seen the sign in the sky. Their rightful master was returning to lead the universe into a hellish darkness.

A knot of Bringers had climbed the palace walls. They rushed Buffy and Liam with jeweled daggers drawn in utter silence.

"Here we go." Liam said as he turned and slammed his foot into the face of the lead bringer. Before that body hit the ground, Buffy's palms lit up with a yellow white energy that cut a bloody swath through the bringers. Many of them lay dying or on fire. Hundreds more came over the balcony looking for blood. A blade came within inches of Liam's neck, but was stopped by the forearm of a slayer that came out of nowhere. With one arm still blocking the blade, the slayer struck with two fingers into the eyes of the Bringer blinding him instantly. She didn't bother to wipe the blood from her hands before she hurled herself into the angry mob.

Liam turned in time to watch the slayer tear into the bringers like a hungry tiger. He smiled.

"Nice to see you're feeling better Ashoka." He said. As she snapped the neck of the last bringer in her path she turned to Liam.

"When this is over, you and I will have a conversation." She said. "I remember the words you said to me." Liam smiled. "Of course you do." He said. "I look forward to our conversation."

Buffy lit up the night. Half the palace balcony exploded outwards as she released the raw energies of the Destroyer. Across the city, alarms were ringing. The bringers were destroying everything in sight. They could see parts of the city burning in huge yellow red flames.

"Incoming!" A voice yelled. Other slayers had joined them on the huge palace balcony. Out of the darkness, they could see the orange white fire trails of rockets launched from the city headed directly for them.

Buffy lit up like a Christmas tree. Golden red fire lapped along her armored skin. Her eyes glowed fiercely white. Buffy Summers was now the Enforcer.

"This is but a glimpse of what humanity will inherit." Liam thought. "How can I possibly guide trillions into how to use this power?" Liam felt the crushing weight of his responsibility. For one brief moment, he wanted to just run away. The sheer scope of what he had to do left him grasping for air. He felt like he was drowning.

That was when the walls came down and he heard in his mind the voice of his father.

"Breathe son." He heard Paul Maud 'dib say to him. "Live one moment at a time. Know, that at this moment, the entire universe is on your side."

The power exploded from Buffy. The night sky lit up as multiple hundred kilotons warheads were destroyed. Buffy had wiped them from the sky. There was a dead silence for a moment. Ashoka Lang walked up to Liam. There was blood on her clothing and blood on the jeweled knife she held. She looked dead at Liam and asked him. "About the words you said to me as you lead me to the hospital. Why did you ask me to marry you?" She said. Liam answered without hesitation.

"In this war to come, I will need the loyalty of the slayers, all the slayers, not just the one's here on Arrakis. You know the things you have been asked to do, the sacrifices you have been asked to make. When I come into my kingdom, I wish to have you by my side. A man can profit much from the wisdom of his wife." Ashoka looked at him for a long moment. She saw the bodies around her. She saw the monster in the sky. She knew the battle ahead.

"I accept." She said. "We will discuss terms later." A loud screeching sound came out of nowhere. The First had other surprises in store for them. Buffy saw the second wave rushing towards the palace.

Liam had only a moment to steal a glimpse at his childhood friend and love Colette Sereas. Any dreams they had of sharing a life together had just gone up in flames.

"My childhood is really over." He thought. "Time to start making the big boy decisions."

She watched the Humans burn. The woman came out of the darkness. She swung her Katana sword. She was tall and lean. Her eyes burned with hate. The First stood beside her.

"You know I don't like it when you look like _him_." She said. The First smiled. He always chose this form to torment her.

"He was your husband for thousands of years, you know, before you betrayed him and all of creation." The First said.

"I am no one's slave." She said. Her pride could be heard in her voice. "My will be done."

"You are dangerously close to hubris." The First said.

"All you higher powers say that. I won't blindly obey you. I will do what I find right in my own eyes." said Lilith, the mother of all demons. "And tonight, I plan on killing Liam Atreides."

She signaled her hoards towards the palace.


	18. Chapter 19

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

Anchovy, Anchovy you're so delicious. I love you more than all the other fishes."

Dawn, The Anchovy song

BTVS S07E07 "Conversations with dead people."

Surayya came in from hyperspace. Her ship appeared over the night side of Arrakis. A blue puff of light appeared where her ship entered normal space.

She couldn't believe her eyes. All around her were tentacles stretching for tens of kilometers across the ink black sky.

"I leave here for a day and everything falls to hell." She thought. Surayya checked her cargo. She had three of the berserker slayers tied up in the cargo hold. The forth had died at her hands. After making sure everyone was strapped in securely she hit the afterburners. The "Stiech Tabr" shot forward.

"Let's see what I can blow up today." Surayya thought. She was feeling reckless. The power she released on Trellian was still burning in her. It made her feel powerful, invincible. That energy told her she could do anything.

Her ship made a near pass at one of the tentacles. As it flashed by, she could see that it was covered in black mystic runes from an unknown language. Her palm slammed the firing button. A cloud of missiles impacted the flesh of the First. Radiation shields came down around the ship. The night sky turned yellow white as the explosion expanded outward. Air turned to plasma. Kilometers below her, Surayya could see the faint outline of the capital city illuminated by her air strike. She rolled her ship into a loop to gloat over handiwork.

Surayya was shocked. The tentacles she had struck glowed dull red from the heat of her missiles yet, they were in one piece. The tentacles of the First moved against the sky as if nothing happened.

"Yeah, this is going to take a little more than what I've got." Surayya thought. She angled her ship towards the landing field of the royal palace. She could see thousands of Bringers swarming over the building. She could see the occasional orange fire balls generated by Buffy as she cut a swath of destruction through the mob. Surayya flew over the palace once as she prepared for a strafing run.

Liam watched the girl as she danced around the kitchen. She was a young woman with long brown hair and the beginning of hips.

"_Little Miss Muffet counting down from seven three oh." _He remembered the words of Faith Lahane.

She looked about fifteen years old. Liam knew better. The girl before her was a container of mystical forces billions of years old. He watched thru the kitchen window as she prepared her dinner in the primitive microwave oven. Her name was Dawn and she was Buffy's sister. She was the closest thing he had to a blood relative outside of his mother. She was his real and only aunt.

Liam had returned to ancient Earth to complete a crucial part of his plan to defeat the First. He came to locate the Key. The Key was another way to build a bridge across the multiverse. Dawn held within her energy capable of lowering the walls between worlds. She held an energy that could provide a _shorting of the way_. The Bene Gesserit called it the _Kwisatz Haderach_.

Liam wanted some of that energy for a very specific purpose. Liam watched as she stained a blouse with tomato sauce from a slice of her pizza.

"I'll just tell Buffy its blood." She said.

Liam was about to reach for the door knob when he felt a buildup of mystical energy. The part of him that was slayer recognized it as evil in nature and intent. The part of him that was the weapon recognized it as the First.

"Show yourself." He said. Liam scanned the space near him until his eyes locked on a shadow within shadows that seemed to shimmer in the dark. Liam knew he didn't have much time. He opened the kitchen door and let himself into the Summer's house. Dawn turned a corner to reenter the kitchen. She froze in utter shock. Before her stood a tall young man. He had raven black hair and the strangest blue within blue eyes. Oddly enough, he had Buffy's pug nose. The man looked familiar to Dawn.

She knew what to do. Buffy had trained her well. Dawn grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter and pointed it towards the stranger.

"Back, spawn of evil!" Dawn shouted across the room. "My sister's the slayer! Touch me and you're dead meat!"

Liam smiled. His aunt was feisty.

"My name is Liam Atreides" he said kindly. "I am a…friend of Buffy." Liam leaned forward. Dawn raised her knife. He decided to stay perfectly still. "You are in grave danger."

"How do you know Buffy?" Dawn asked. "And have you ever heard of a cell phone?" Oddly enough, Liam had not.

"The First is coming here, tonight." Liam said urgently. "It will appear to you as your dead mother. Do not believe anything it says."

Dawn looked at him strangely. It still hurt when she thought of Joyce.

"You mean the thing that tried to get Angel to kill himself?" She asked.

"Yes." Liam answered. Liam had heard many stories about this night from Buffy. The First would show himself here. Dawn needed to be protected. Dawn needed to protect herself.

"The First will send a poltergeist after you to scare you, to throw you off balance, to get you to hurt yourself. There is a book of spells in the living room. I can show you how to use it." Liam remembered the lessons his witch mother Motorria had given him.

"Also, I'm going to need a piece of you." Liam flicked his wrist. A spell he and his mother had worked on sprang to life. A long ribbon of green energy arced between Dawn and the ring he wore that bore the mark of house Atreides. It was the ring his grandfather had worn.

"Hey! Stop that!" Dawn yelped. She was not hurt but hated the thought of anybody messing with the green energy of the Key.

Liam smiled. "If you would be so kind and get me the book of spells from the living room, I can show you how to exorcise a poltergeist. "

Dawn trusted him. She didn't know why. There was something about him that felt like family. A short while later Liam had taught her all she needed to know. When he was finished he just stood and said "I have to go." And disappeared in a puff of light.

Later, Dawn found a crossbow to play with.


	19. Chapter 20

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.**

Duncan Idaho recites an ancient Fremen saying

They wouldn't let him fight.

Liam found himself in the thick of the Bringers. No sooner would five go down, ten more Bringers would take their place. The sky above him was lit up with bright explosions. The night air was filled with thunder from explosions in the city. The Fish Speakers had joined the fray as well.

Something bright and yellow-white lit the sky above. Above him, something burned with the fury of a star. Liam could see tentacles across the sky made dull red from the heat of the explosion.

"That would be Surayya. Right on time." He thought. Liam turned to his left, ready to take down the next wave of Bringers, when his security guards grabbed him. Five women lifted Liam off his feet and strong armed him back into royal palace.

"Buffy's orders." Said Colette. She was one of the women that had snatched him from the battlefield. "We're getting you to a safe room." She said. Liam squirmed as he tried to break free. He wanted to join the battle. Behind the women that carried him, he could see the glowing light from Buffy's spine. Her energies of green and red and yellow were a perfect orchestra of destruction. The screams of the Bringers, her music, the power of the Destroyer her instrument. Before they turned a corner, Liam saw lightening leap from her fingers. The energy danced like demon fire on the crowd below. Flesh, concrete and plaz all became one. The city drowned in a liquid fire.

Buffy was a dragon.

"My mother is Shiva the destroyer." He thought. As the security team turned the corner they ran right into Lilith the mother of all demons. They dropped Liam and quickly formed a barrier around him with their bodies. The slayers had their Lexan knifes at the ready.

Lilith stared at them with cold grey eyes. The Bringers she had with her parted so that they would not be in her way.

"You murder my children." She said. "Now I will murder you." Lilith stared straight at Liam. Liam rolled his eyes upward as he relaxed the hold on his mind. He let his consciousness slip into the future. He saw Lilith standing over his body in nearly all of the possible futures except one.

"This will be risky. " He thought. "It would be too much to invoke her power and lose her in battle." He saw Lilith draw her sword and slowly approach him. "But power is worthless if you are afraid to invoke it." He thought. He began to pray.

"Great Mother, I need you!" Liam said. Sineya, the first slayer appeared. The Bringers trembled slightly as they backed away.

"I thought I told you to stay away from my grandson?" she said. Sineya Bantu, first avatar of the Destroyer, stepped forward. Lilith growled. This was the one! This was the slayer that had started it all! This was the slayer that had started the relentless butchering of her children. Lilith leapt forward. The steel of her Katana sword clanged against the metal of Sineya's scythe. Sineya turned and kicked Lilith. The woman doubled over in pain. Sineya grabbed her by the back of her neck and sunk her teeth into her. Lilith screamed. With her mouth covered in blood, Sineya looked up and commanded the slayers.

"Get him to the safe room, now!" The slayers jumped at her command.

She returned to her prey. Sineya slammed Lilith against the wall and pinned her. Her forearm lay across the throat of Lilith crushing her windpipe.

"I'm going to start by breaking every bone in your body." Sineya hissed at her.

Lilith growled and made a noise that was not quite human. Her eyes were gray. She blinked. Now her eyes were yellow. Her body began to change. Something long and flexible unfolded from the base of her spine. It slithered along the floor unseen.

"I don't think so!" said Lilith. Instantly her tail whipped itself around the neck of Sineya and _squeezed_. Lilith pulled the slayer off of her. Lilith rubbed her neck. Her flesh was bruised. She was bleeding. Lilith extended her claws. Razor sharp bone grew from her fingertips. She extended her fangs. A row shark like teeth filled her mouth. This is what she did when she prepared to eat.

"Give me your flesh." Lilith said as she drew closer. Her tongue flickered in and out of her mouth like a tiny pink snake. Sineya forgot about the tail strangling her. She focused her mind past the shortage of breath, past the blackness constricting her vision and punched Lilith squarely in the jaw. Lilith recoiled, dazed by the blow. Sineya hit her again dislocating her jaw. The tail relaxed. Sineya tore it from her throat. Sineya retrieved her scythe from the floor. She grunted as she ran the sharp point of the wooden shaft through Lilith's chest. She pulled it out, twisted her body for speed and cut through Lilith's neck. The head came off cleanly and rolled down the hallway. Blood splattered the walls and floor.

The Bringers fled.

Sineya stood there for a moment. Sweat covered her body. She was breathing heavily. She turned and watched the battle occurring outside. She could see flashes of power from Buffy. She could hear the screams of the dying. The slayers were in the mist of one hell of a battle.

And there was nothing she could do. She and the Destroyer had agreed to place sharp limits on interfering with human affairs. Besides, they had Buffy and the _Kwisatz Haderach. _If they couldn't survive with that then they were worthless. Purple light flashed across the part of the battlefield she could see. A grim grin came from the corner of her mouth.

"Kids…" Sineya muttered to herself. A moment later she faded away as she returned to that place where she and the Destroyer dwelted.


	20. Chapter 21

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

**The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.**

Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to Paul Atreides

They dumped him on the floor without much ceremony. Liam brushed himself off as he stood. His dignity was intact. He understood why the slayers had brought him here. He'd had known Colette since he was a boy and the other slayers since Stiech Kindle. Ego would never be an issue with them. They were more like his sisters. Sisters with superpowers.

"Did you see her?" One of the slayers said excitedly. "The Great Mother!" She squealed. Her voice was high pitched and excited. "The Great Mother was here!" The young slayer was awed to see Sineya in the flesh.

Liam looked around the safe room. It was a hundred square meter triple steel and plaz reinforced room with kinetic energy and biological weapon shielding. The room had a high terawatt Holtzman shield which kept it safe even from atomics.

Colette was not impressed. She focused more on securing the room. Her eyes scanned over the control panel in the corner of the room. She dispatched the other slayers to review their tactical status. Her mind was still on the enemy outside.

"So, Liam." She said. "Is the First coming to squish us all like some _insane_ squid?"

"Those _tentacles_ are just the hairs on its skin." Liam said he remembered the night the First came to visit him. When they touched he got a brief glance into the nature of the First. "The First is _huge_. The First is an entire universe just as big as our own."

Liam removed the ring he wore. It was the same ring worn by the Father of Paul Atreides. He had to threaten to open up a hell dimension inside of Fishspeaker command before they allowed him to wear his grandfather's ring. The ring was his. It was his birthright. He had the right to wear it. It was funny. The world thought of him and the slayers as a collection of halflings, weirdlings and freaks.

The slayers to him were just family, so were the Atreides. His memories of his Atreides bloodline ran deep and clear. His father's voice taught him to be how to brave.

"I'm the ultimate Buffy, Dune crossover." He thought.

Liam placed the Duke's ring on the floor of the safe room. Locked away inside of it was Dawn's green energy.

He looked over to Colette and caught her eye.

"I don't if you'll see me again when this is over." He said to her.

"I know." Colette said sadly. "I love you." She said.

"I love you too." Liam said. He spoke the spell his mother had taught him. There was a spark, a low rumbling that spoke of horrific energies. The space around Liam began to quiver and then the walls between worlds came down. They could see in the wash of the glow of Dawn's green energy an infinite number of Liams, all of them holding hands, spanning the width of the multiverse. Liam reached out with one hand and grabbed a hold of himself.

"Now!" Liam screamed. The Holtzman shield came down. The tentacles of the First burst through the walls shattering the unbreakable steel as if it was plywood. Liam reached out and touched the First. He gathered his power and _yanked_.

As with Caleb and Ashoka, the power of the First flowed into the Liam of this universe, and then the Liam of the next universe and then the Liam of the next universe after that. Down an infinite number of Liam's the power of the First flowed and drained. The First was an entire universe but Liam was bigger.

"Let me go!" An image of Buffy said to him. Liam could see the desperation across the face of the monster. It finally understood what was happening. Across a billion worlds tentacles began to quiver and recede into the whirlpool of light from which they emerged.

The image of Buffy screamed at him again.

"You don't know what you're doing!" It said. I am one of your so called Powers-that-be!" The image of Buffy came so close to him that parts of it were passing through him.

"Destroy me and you unleash the holocaust!" Liam ignored it. The First evil lacked certain creditability.

"For too long, we the living, have suffered because of the lies you've told." Liam winced as the power flowed through him. Where he touched the First, his arm felt like it was on fire.

"I can make you a god." The First said desperately. "I can give you power, riches, women! What can I do for you!

"You can shut the fuck up and die!" Liam said. He opened all the channels. The full power of the First fell down upon him and he was lost in the blackness of a trillion evil stars.

Buffy only caught a fraction of it. She turned her head from the slaughter for only a moment as the sound of a million locomotives swelled up from guts of the royal palace.

"Please God, no, please God no, please God no" she begged. Blinding light over took her. The world was made white.

The universe shook as the First was consumed by the ultimate vampire. As it died, it sent lightning bolts far into the desert. Afterwards, all there was left was silence and the blowing of the desert winds.


	21. Chapter 22

All characters from the Dune Universe are property of the Frank Herbert Estate. All characters from the Buffyverse are Property of Joss Whedon. Everything else belongs to me.

"This is what people don't understand about us. We're just family."

Liam Atreides

-Notes from the Golden Throne.

She didn't care who she hurt on her way to the safe room. Buffy knocked both slayer s and Bringers out of her way as she ran blindly down the steps. Down five levels of the imperial mansion she fled until she found the pile of rubble and shattered steel that was the safest place in the world. She could hear the moaning of the injured. She could hear the voice of Colette beneath the tons of concrete and plaz. Buffy didn't hesitate. She began to work her way through the rubble tossing metric tons of concrete aside as if they were Styrofoam blocks.

Her strength came natural to her. Buffy Summers was the emissary of the Destroyer. Buffy lifted a five meter section of steel and saw the battered body of Colette Searas. Buffy remembered her face. She was Liam's childhood sweetheart. Colette was somewhat injured. There was a nasty bruise on her forehead.

Buffy bent down over her. She made sure the slayer was awake.

"Where is Liam?" She asked. Fear made her voice tremble.

Colette looked out of one swollen eye. All she could say was "He's gone."

_**Before:**_

A billion evil stars fell down upon him. In the space of a trillionth of a second _something_ reached out and grabbed him. Liam awoke in a white room. Angelus recognized where he was immediately.

"The last time I saw this place it was at the top floor of Wolfram and Hart building." The memories of Angelus informed Liam. He was in the white room which was the conduit to the senior partners.

A little girl approached him. She looked about age five. She wore a simple white dress. Her hair was blond just like her grandmothers.

"Hi, daddy!" she said. She held a huge grin on her face. Her head was round. She had full cheeks. "They said I could see you today!"

It took Liam a moment to notice the couple walking up behind her. The couple consisted of one male and one female humanoid. They both had similar androgynous features. They could have been brother and sister or clones.

"It _survived_." One of them said. "It wasn't supposed to survive. The weapon has no use beyond its function. Its function has been fulfilled. " The female spoke. Liam could hear the distain in her voice.

"He's my daddy!" The little girl said with all the strength her tiny body could muster. She bawled her fists against her tiny waist. The couple stared down at her with contempt yet they made no move to contradict her.

"I know these losers." The memory of Angelus said to Liam. "They speak for the Powers-that-Be." Liam was awed. He was in the presence of authentic gods. "The last time I saw them they were lying in a pool of their own blood." Angelus said.

The little girl walked over to Liam. She pressed her tiny soft lips against his ear. "I told mommy I wouldn't let the bad man get you. He was going to burn you daddy! So I brought you here."

All the pieces suddenly came together. Liam was a mentat. He began to understand what he was dealing with.

"What are you?" He asked as he looked into her pale blue within blue eyes.

"I am something new, I am something old. I am something that has not been seen since before eternity began. I am one of the Powers-That-Be."

"How?" He asked.

She smiled in a way that sent a shiver up his spine. "That's another story for another time." She said. Liam was quite sure that the being before him was not a little girl at all.

Liam saw on the sleeve of her dress in tiny letters the letters "AA". It took him a moment to decode them.

"Annie Atreides." He whispered to her. A shocked look came across her face that turned to joy and then tears.

"My name!" she said. "I finally know my name!" She smiled in a twisted way as she turned to the couple that had been keeping her prisoner. Annie Atreides glowed. Her body lifted itself inches above the ground.

"Time to go home daddy." She said. She waved her hand and Liam disappeared in burst of light. Microseconds after he was gone she destroyed the pocket universe she had built and then she turned her anger on the gods who had betrayed her.

Buffy's heart sank. Liam was gone. Colette's words were still echoing in her ears. All her strength was useless now. All she could do was bend steel and crush metal. She couldn't bring her son back.

You look terrible." Someone said to Buffy. Buffy turned her head. Liam was standing next to her. It took all of her self control to keep from crushing him in a bear hug.

**Epilog:**

Lightning flashed across the dark Arrakis sky. The First was dying killed by the ultimate vampire. As it died its power scattered across the planet burning Arrakis where it touched. The First contained a significant amount of magic and demonic energy.

The effect was called Thaumogenesis. It was the creation of life by magic. Where the energies of the First struck hideous bloodthirsty things began to pull themselves out of the sand. One of the monsters stood naked under the dark Arrakis sky as ancient memories poured back into its regenerated form. This was a particularly nasty monster. Only by sacrificing the First could it be brought back to its undead life.

Dracula, lord of the undead, had returned.


End file.
